SANTINIKETAN
LIBRARY
Cla$s
vol. 3
5I*e//No •
* 4-
Accession No 2t2^0
M. r., 11
lEbc “fflew Tllnivcrejfl Xibratg
MODERN PAINTERS
VOL. Ill
THE UNIVERSAL EDITION OF
JOHN RUSKIN’S WORKS
Modern Painters, 5 vols. With 315 Illustrations
and Plates, and i Coloured Plate.
The Stones of Venice, 3 vols. With 173 Illustra-
tions and Plates, and 7 Coloured Plates.
The Seven Lamps of Architecture. With 14
Plates.
Lectures on Architecture and Painting. V^iih 23
Illustrations.
Elements of Drawing. With 48 Illustrations.
“Unto this Last.’^
The Two Paths : On Decoration and Manufacture.
With 2 Idates.
The Political Economy of Art, subsequently called
A Joy for Ever.
Selections from His Writings.
The Illustrations and Plales are throughout
printed on Art Paper.
The other Works to follow in course.
MODER'N PAINTERS
By
JOHN RUSKiN
VOLUME III
CONTAINING
PART IV
®f Bftang irblngs
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEbGE & SONS Limite
New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO
Kiohakd &, Sons, Limitk7>,
BREAD STREET ITIT.T., K.C'., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.’
PREFACE
As this preface is nearly all about myself, no one
need take the trouble of reading it, unless he hap-
pens to be desirous of knowing — what I, at least,
am bound to state — the circumstances which have
caused the long delay of the work, as well as the
alterations which will be noticed in its form.
The first and second volumes were written to
check, as far as I could, the attacks upon Turne” t
which prevented the public from honouring his
genius, at the time when his power was greatest.
The chccli was partially given, but too late; Turner
waj^ jeized by painful illness not long after the
second volume appeared; his works, towards the
close of the year 1845, showed a conclusive failure
of power; and I saw that nothing remained for me
to write, but his epitaph.
The critics had done their proper and appointed
work; they had embittered, more than those who
did not know Turner intimately could have believed
possible, the closing years of his life; and had
blinded the world in general (as it appears ordained
by Fate that the world always shall be blinded) to
the presence of a great spirit amo»g them, till the
hour of its departure. With them, and their success-
ful work, I had nothing more to do; the account of
gain and los^, of gifts and gratitude, between Turner
and his countrymen, was for ever closed. He could
only be left his quiet death at Chelsea — the sun
upon his face; they to dispose a length of funeral
through Ludgate, and bury, with threefold honour,
his body in St Paul’s, his pictures at Charing Cross,
and his purposes in Chancery. But with respect to
the illustration and preservation of those of his
works which remained unburied, I felt that gmuch
Vi PREFACE
might yet be done, if I could at all succeed .fc prov-
ing that these works had some nobleness !n them,,
and were worth preservation. I pursued my task,
therefore, as I had at first proposed, with this only
difference in method — ^that instead of writing in con-
tinued haste, such as I had been forced into at first
by the urgency of the occasion, I set myself to do
the work as well as I could, and to collect materials
for the complete examination of the canons of art
received among us.
I have now given ten years of my life to the
single purpose of enabling myself to judge rightly of
art, and spent them in labour as earnest and con-
tinuous as men usually undertake to gain position,
accumulate fortune. It is true, that the public
still call me an ‘ amateur *; nor have I ever been
able to persuade them that it was possible^ to work
steadily and hard with any other motive than that
of gaining bread, or to give up a fixed numljei; of
hours every day to the furtherance of an object un-
connected with personal interests. I have, however,
given up so much of life to this object; earnestly
desiring to ascertain, and be able to teach, the truth
respecting art; and also knowing that this truth
was, by time and labour, definitely ascertainable.
It is an idea too frequently entertained, by persons
who are not much interested in art, that there are
no laws of right or wrong concerning it; and that
the best art is that which pleases most widely. Hence
the constant allegation of ‘ dogmatism ’ against any
one who states unhesitatingfy either preference or
principle, respecting pictures. There are, however,
laws of truth and right in painting, jusf as fixed as
those of harmony in music, or of affinity in chemistry.
Those laws are perfectly ascertainable by labour,
and ascertainable no otherwise. It is as ridiculous
for any one to speak positively about painting who
has not given a great part of his life to its study,
as it would be for a person who had never studied
chemistry to give a lecture on affinities of elements;
but it is also as ridiculous for a person to speak
PREFACE
vii
hesitatiiigly about laws of painting who has con-
scientiolely given his time to their ascertainment,
‘as it would be for Mr Faraday to announce in a
dubious manner that iron had an affinity for oxygen,
and to put the question to the vote of his audience
whether it had or not. Of course there are many
things, in all stages of knowledge, which cannot be
dogmatically stated; and it will be found, by any
candid reader, either of what I have before written,
or of this book, that, in many cases, I am not dog-
matic. The phrase, ‘ I think so ’, or, ‘it seems so
to me ’, will be met with continually; and I pray
the reader to believe that I use such expression
always in seriousness, never as matter of form.
It may perhaps be thought that, considering the
not very elaborate structure of the following volumes,^
they might have been finished sooner. But it will
be founfl, on reflection, that the ranges of inquiry
engaged in demanded, even for their slight investi-
gaficm, time and pains which are quite unrepresented
in the result. It often required a week or two’s hard
walking to determine some geological problem, now
dismissed in an unnoticed sentence; and in con-
stantly needed examination and thought, prolonged
during many days in the picture gallery, to form
opinions which the reader may suppose to be dictated
by caprice, and will hear only to dispute.
A more serious disadvantage, resulting from the
necessary breadth of subject, w^as the chance of
making mistakes in minor and accessory points.
For the labour of a critic who sincerely desires to be
just, extends into more fields than it is possible for
any single hand to furrow straightly. Ho has to
take some ]!ote of many physical sciences; of optics,
geometry, gftology, botany, and anatomy; he must
acquaint himself with the works of all great artists,
and with the temper and history of the times in
which they lived; he must be a fair metaphysician,
and a careful observer of the phenomena of natural
scenery. It is not possible to extend the range of
work thus widely, without running the chance of
PREFACE
viii
occasionally making mistakes; and if I cfirefully
guarded against that chance, I should be compelled
both to shorten my powers of usefulness in many
directions, and to lose much time over what work
I undertook. All that I can secure, therefore, is
rightness in main points and main tendencies; for
it is perfectly possible to protect oneself against
small errors, and yet to make great and final errprs
in the sum of work : on the other hand, it is equally
possible to fall into many small errors, and yet be
right in tendency all the while, and entirely right
in the end. In this respect, some men may be
compared to careful travellers, who neither stumble
at stones, nor slip in sloughs, but have, from the
beginning of their journey to its close, chosen the
'Vrong road; and others to those who, however
slipping or stumbling at the 'wayside, have yet their
eyes fixed on the true gate and goal (stilmbling,
perhaps, even the more because they have), and will
not fail of reaching them. Such are assuredly 1?iie
safer guides : he who follows them may avoid their
slips, and be their companion in attainment.
Although, therefore, it is not possible but that, in
the discussion of so many subjects as are necessarily
introduced in the following pages, here and there a
chance should arise of minor mistake or misconcep-
tion, the reader need not be disturbed by the de-
tection of any such. He will find always that they
do not afiect the matter mainly in hand.
I refer especiallv in these remarks to the chapters
on Classical and Mediseval Landscape. It is certain,
that in many respects, the views there stated must
be inaccurate or incomplete; for how should it be
otherwise when the subject is one whose 'proper dis-
cussion would require knowledge of the qntire history
of two great ages of the world? But I am well
assured that the suggestions in those chapters are
useful; and that even if, after farther study of the
subject, the reader should find cause to differ with
me in this or the other speciality, he 'will yet thank
me for ^helping him to a certain length in the in-
PREFACE
IX
vestigatioto, and confess, perhaps, that he could not
at last hve been right, if I had not first ventured
to be wrong.
And of one thing he may be certified, that any
error I fall into will not be in an illogical deduction :
I may mistake the meaning of a symbol, or the angle
of a rock-cleavage, but not draw an inconsequent
conchision. I state this, because it has often been
said that I am not logical, by persons who do not
so much as know what logic means. Next to imagin-
ation, the power of perceiving logical relation is one
of the rarest among men : certainly, of those with
whom I have conversed, I have found always ten
who had deep feeling, quick wit, or extended know-
ledge, for one who could set down a syllogism with-
out a flaw; and for ten who could set down a syllo-
gism, only one who could entirely understand that a
square ha^ four sides. Even as I am sending these
sheets to press, a work is put into my hand, written
to pfbfe (I would, from the depth of my heart, it
could prove) that there was no ground for what I
said in The Stones of Venice respecting the logical
probability of the continuity of evil. It seems
learned, temperate, thoughtful, everything in feel-
ing and aim that a book should be, and yet it begins
with this sentence :
‘ The question cited in our preface : “ Why not infinite good
out of infinite evil ? ” must be taken to imply — for it else can
have no weight — that in order to the production of infinite
good, the existence of infiiiit^evil is indispegsable.'
So, if I had said that there was no reason why
honey should not be sucked out of a rock, and oil
out of a flint;f rock, the writer would have told me
this sentence jpust be taken to imply — for it else
could have no weight — ^that in order to the produc-
tion of honey, the existence of rocks is indispensable.
No less intense and marvellous are the logical errors
into which our best writers are continually falling,
owing to the notion that laws of logic will help
them better than common sense. Whereas^ any
X
PREFACE?
man who can reason at all, does it instjftictively,
and takes leaps over intermediate syllogisms by the
score, yet never misses his footing at the end of the
leap; but he who cannot instinctively argue, might
as well, with the gout in both feet, try to follow a
chamois hunter by the help of crutches, as to follow,
by the help of syllogism, a person who has the right
use of his reason. I should not, however, have
thought it necessary to allude to this common charge
against my writings, but that it happens to confirm
some views I have long entertained, and which the
reader will find glanced at in their proper place,
respecting the necessity of a more practically logical
education for our youth. Of other various charges I
, need take no note, because they are always answered
the one by the other. The complaint made against
me to-day for being narrow and exclusive, is met
to-morrow by indi'mation that I shoufd admire
schools whose characters cannot be reconciled;^ and
the assertion of one critic, that I am always con-
tradicting myself, is balanced by the vexation of
another, at my ten years’ obstinacies in error.
I once intended the illustrations to these volumes
to be more numerous and elaborate, but the art of
photography now enables any reader to obtain as
many memoranda of the facts of nature as he needs;
and, in the course of my ten years’ pause, I have
formed plans for the representation of some of the
works of Turner on their own scale ; so that it
would have heefi quite useless to spend time in re-
ducing drawings to the size 6f this page, which were
afterwards to be engraved of their own size I
have therefore here only given illustrg,tions enough
to enable the reader, who has not access to the works
of Turner, to understand the princi^es laid down
in the text, and apply them to such art as may be
within his reach. And I owe sincere thanks to the
1 I should be very grateful to proprietors of x)ictures or
drawings by Turner, if they would send me lists of the works
in their possession ; as I am desirous of forming a systematic
catalogue of all his works.
1>REFACE
XI
various Agra vers who have worked with me, for the
zeal and care with which they have carried oiit the
requirements in each case, and overcome difficulties
of a nature often widely differing from those involved
by their habitual practice. I would not make in-
vidious distinction, wljere all have done well; but
may perhaps be permitted to point, as examples of
what I mean, to the 3rd and 6th Plates in this
volume (the 6th being left unlettered in order not
to injure the effect of its ground), in which Mr. Le
Keux and Mr. Armytage have exactly facsimiled, in
line engraving, drawings of mine made on a grey
ground touched with white, and have given even the
loaded look of the body colour. The power of thus
imitating actual touches of colour with pure lines
will be, I believe, of great future importance in
rendering. Turner’s work on a large scale. As for
the merit or demerit of these or other drawings of
my which I am obliged now for the sake of
illustration often to engrave, I believe I could speak
of it impartially, and should unreluctantly do so;
but I leave, as most readers will think I ought, such
judgment to them, merely begging them to remem-
ber that there are two general principles to be kept
in mind in examining the drawings of any writer on
art : the first, that they ought at least to show such
ordinary skill in draughtsmanship, as to prove that
the writer knows what the good qualities of drawing
are; the second, that they are never to be expected
to equal, in either exec^jtion or conctsption, the work
of accomidished artists — for the simple reason, that
in order to do anything thoroughly well, the whole
mind, and the whole available time, must be given
to that single art. It is probable, for reasons which
will be noted fti the following pages, that the critical
and executive faculties are in great part independent
of each other; so that it is nearly as great an ab-
surdity to require of any critic that he should equal
in execution even the work Tvhich he condemns, as
to require of the audience which hisses a piece of
vocal music that they should instantly chant^it in
4i PREFACE?
truer harmony themselves. But whethejr this be
true or not (it is at least untrue to this e^Sent, that
a certain power of drawing is indispensable to the
critic of art), and supposing that the executive and
critical powers always exist in some correspondent
degree in the same person, still they cannot be
cultivated to the same extent. The attention re-
quired for the development of a theory is necessarily
withdrawn from the design of a drawing, and the
time devoted to the realization of a form is lost to
the solution of a problem. Choice must at last be
made between one and the other power, as the princi-
pal aim of life ; and if the painter should find it neces-
sary sometimes to explain one of his pictures in
words, or the writer to illustrate his meaning with a
drawing, the skill of the one need not be doubted
because his logic is feeble, nor the sense of^the other
because his pencil is listless.
As, however, it is sometimes alleged by tfeew op-
ponents of my principles, that I have never done
anything^ it is proper that the reader should know
exactly the amount of work for which I am answer-
able in these illustrations. When an example is
given from any of the works of Turner, it is either
etched by myself from the original drawing, or en-
graved from a drawing of mine, translating Turner’s
work out of colour into black and white, as, for
instance, the frontispiece to the fourth volume.
When a plate is inscribed as ‘ after ’ such and such
a master, I have always my|jelf made the drawing,
in black and white, from the original picture; as,
for instance, Plate XI in this volume. If it has
been made from a previously existing engraving, it
is inscribed with the name of the first engraver at
the left-hand lowest corner; as, for instance, Plate
XVIIl in Vol. IV. Outline etchings are either by
my own hand on the steel, as Plate XII here, and
XX, XXI in Vol. IV.; or copies from my pen draw-
ings, etched by Mr Boys, with a fidelity for which I
sincerely thank him; one, Plate XXII, Vol. IV, is
both drawn and etched by Mr Boys from an old
yREFACE xiii
engraving. Most of the other illustrations are en-
graved ilpm my own studies from nature. The
coloured Rate (VII in this volume) is from a drawing
executed with great skill by my assistant, Mr J. J.
Laing, from MSS. in the British Museum; and the
lithography of it has been kindly superintended by
Mr Henry Shaw, whose renderings of mediseval orna-
ments stand, as far as I know, quite unrivalled in
modern art. The two woodcuts of mediseval design.
Figs. 1 and 3, are also from drawings by Mr liaing,
admirably cut by Miss Byfieid. I use this word
‘ admirably \ not with reference to mere delicacy of
execution, which can usually be had for money, but
to the perfect fidelity of facsimile, which is in general
not to be had for money, and by which Miss Byfield
has saved me all trouble wHh respect to the numer-
ous woodcuts in the fourth volume; first, by her
excellent ^renderings of various portions of Albert
Durer’s woodcuts; and, secondly, by reproducing,
to tlj^y; last dot or scratch, my owm pen diagrams,
drawn in general so roughly that few wood-engravers
would have condescended to cut them with care, and
yet always involving some points in which care v^as
indispensable. One or two changes have been per-
mitted in the arrangement of the book, which make
the text in these volumes not altogether a symmetri-
cal continuation of that in former ones. Thus, I
thought it hotter to put the numbers of paragraphs
always at the left-hand side of the page; and as
the summaries, in small type, appeared to me for
the most part cumbrous ^ind useless, i have banished
them. 1 am not sorry thus to carry out my
own principle of the sacrifice of architectural or
constructive symmetry to practical service. The
plates are, in a somewhat unusual way, numbered
consecutively through the two volumes, as I intend
them to be also through the fifth. This plan saves
much trouble in references.
I have only to express, in conclusion, my regret
that it has been impossible to finish the work within
the limits first proposed. Having, of late, found my
xiv PREFAC;p
designs always requiring enlargement in nrocess of
execution, I will take care, in future, to sy no limits
whatsoever to any good intentions. In tne present
instance I trust the reader will pardon me, as the
later efforts of our schools of art have necessarily
introduced many new topics of discussion.
And so I wish him heartily a happy New Year.
Denmark Hill, Jan. 1856.
Vable of contents
PART IV
OF MANY THINGS
CHAPTEK PAUE
’ I : Of the received Opinions touching the
‘ Grand Style ’ 1
II : Of Realization 17
III : Of the Real Nature of Greatness of Style 25
IV : Of the False Ideal : First, Religious 48
V : Of the False Ideal : Secondly, Profane... 67
VI : Of the True Ideal : First, Purist 77
VII : Of the True Ideal : Secondly, Naturalist. 85
VIII: Of the True Ideal : Thirdly, Grotesque.. 101
IX : Of Finish 119
Of the Use of Pictures 136
XI : Of the Novelty of Landscape 158
XTI : Of the Pathetic Fallacy 166
XIII : Of Classical Landscape 184
XIV : Of Mediteval Landscape : First, the
Fields 209
XV : Of Mediaeval Landscape : Secondly, the
Rocks 251
XVI : Of Modern Landscape 271
XVII : The Moral of Landscape 306
XVIII : Of the Teachers of Turner 337
APPENDIX
I : Claude’s Tree-drawing 365
II : German Philosophy 367
III : Plagiarism 369
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plato
Lake, Land, and Cloud .
I True and False Griffins .
II Drawing of Tree-bark
III Strength of old Pino
IV Pamihpation according to )
Claude . . . . \
V ^•od and bad Tree-drawing
VI Foreground Leafage
VII Botany of the Thirteenth Cen- )
tury {Coloured) . . . j
VIII The Growth of Leaves .
IX Botany of the Fourteenth )
Century . . . j'
X Geology of the Middle Ages .
XI Latest Purism
XII The Shoi es of Wharfe .
XIII First Mountain-Naturalism
XIV The liOmbard Ai)ennine .
XV St. George of the Seawited
XVI Early Naturalism .
XVII Advanced Naturalism
. 5LL| B.
Drawn by
Facing
page
The Author. Front.
The Author
. 110
FariouA
. 120
The Author
. 128
Claude.
. 130
Turner and Con
_
stable
. 132
The Author .
. 133
M issal- Painters
. 226
The Author .
. 227
Missa l-Paihi firs
. 228
J^eonardo, d^c.
Raphael
262
. 344
J. IV. M. Turner
. 346
Jlasaccio
. 347
The Author .
. 348
The A^ thor .
. 350
Titian
. 352
Tiutoret
. 354
. 345
xvii
MODERN PAINTERS
PAKT IV
OF MANY THINGS
CHAPTER I
OF THE RECEIVED OPINIONS TOUCHING THE
‘ GRAND STYLE '
§ 1. In taking up the clue of an inquiry, now
intWiriitted for nearly ten years, it may be well to
do as a traveller would, who had to recommence an
interrupted journey in a guideless country; and, as-
cending, as it were, some little hill beside our road,
note how far we have already advanced, and what
pleasantest ways we may choose for farther progress,
I endeavoured, in the beginning of the first volume,
to divide the sources of pleasure open to us in Art
into certain groups, which might conveniently be
studied in succession. After some preliminary dis-
cussion, it was concluded (Part I, Chap. Ill, § 86)
that those groups wc^, in the mUin, three*,, con-
sisting, first, of the pleasures taken in perceiving
simple resemblance to Nature (Ideas of Truth);
secondly, of •the pleasures taken in the beauty of the
things chosen to be painted (Ideas of Beauty) ; and,
lastly, of pleasures taken in the meanings and rela-
tions of these things (Ideas of Relation),
The first volume, treating of the ideas of Truth,
was chiefly occupied with an inquiry into the .various
success with which different artists had represented
the facts of Nature — an inquiry necessarily con-
M. P., III. B*
RECEIVED OPINIONS TOUCHING [part iv
ducted very imperfectly, owing to the jvant of
pictorial illustration.
The second volume merely opened the inquiry into
the nature of ideas of Beauty and Relation, by analys-
ing (as far as I was able to do so) the two faculties
of the human mind which mainly seized such ideas;
namely, the contemplative and imaginative faculties.
It remains for us to examine the various suc.cess
of artists, especially of the great landscape-painter
whose works have been throughout our principal sub-
ject, in addressing these faculties of the human mind,
and to consider who among them has conveyed the
noblest ideas of beauty, and touched the deepest
sources of thought.
§ 2. I do not intend, however, now to pursue the
inquiry in a method so laboriously systematic; for
the subject may, it seems to me, be more usefully
treated by^ pursuing the different questions which rise
out of it just as they occur to us, without too great
scrupulousness in marking connections, or in^gling
on sequences. Much time is wasted by human
beings, in general, on establishment of systems; and
it often takes more labour to master the intricacies
of an artificial connection, than to remember the
separate facts which are so carefully connected. I
suspect that system-makers, in general, are not of
much more use, each in his owm domain, than, in
that of Pomona, the old women who tie cherries upon
sticks, for the more convenient portableness of the
same. To cultivate well, and choose well, your
cherries, is of some importsmee; but if they can
be had in their ovm -wild way of clustering about
their crabbed stalk, it is a better connection for
them than any other; and, if they canfiot, then, so
that they be not bruised, it makes to a boy of a
practical disposition, not much difference whether
tie gets them by handfuls, or in beaded symmetry on
the exalting stick. I purpose, therefore, hencefor-
ward to trouble myself little with sticks or twine, but
to arrange my chapters with a view to convenient
referej^ce, rather than to any careful division of sub-
CHAP. I] THE ' GRAND STYDE " . S
jeots, aiM to follow out, in any by-ways that may
open, onr right hand or left, whatever question it
seems useful at any moment to settle.
§ 3. And, in the outset, I find myself met by one
which I ought to have touched upon before — one of
especial interest in the present state of the Arts.
I have said that the art is greatest which includes the
greatest ideas ; but I have not endeavoured to define
the nature of this greatness in the ideas themselves.
We speak of great truths, of great beauties, great
thoughts. What is it which makes one truth greater
than another, one thought greater than another?
This question is, I repeat, of peculiar importance at
the present time; for, during a period now of some
hundred and fifty years, all writers on Art who have
pretended to eminence, have insisted much on a
supposed distinction between what they call the
Great and the Low Schools; using the terms ‘ High
Art ‘ Great or Ideal Style and other such, as
descriptive of a certain noble manner of painting,
which it was desirable that all students of Art should
be early led to reverence and adopt; and character-
izing as ‘ vulgar or ‘ low ’, or ‘ realist another
manner of painting and conceiving, which it was
equally necessary that ail students should be taught
to avoid.
But lately this established teaching, never very in-
telligible, has been gravely called in question. The
advocates and self-supposed practisers of ‘ High Art *
are beginning to be lookq^ upon with doubt, and their
peculiar phraseology to be treated with even a certain
degree of ridicule. And other forms of Art are partly
developed arri^ng us, which do not pretend to be
high, but rather to be strong, healthy, and humble.
This matter of ‘ highness ’ in Art, therefore deserves
our most careful consideration. Has it been, or is
it, a true highness, a true princeliness, or only a show
of it, consisting in courtly manners and robes of
state? Is it rocky height or cloudy height, adamant
or vapour, on which the sun of praise so long has
risen and set? It will be well at once to consider ibis.
4 BEOEIVfiD OPINIONS TOUCHING [partiv
§ 4. And first, let us get, as quickly as n^y be, at
tlie exact meaning with which the advocates of
‘ High Art ’ use that somewhat obscure and figurative
term.
I do not know that the principles in question are
anywhere more distinctly expressed than in two
papers in The Idler^ written by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
of course under the immediate sanction of Johneon;
and which may thus be considered as the utterance
of the views then held upon the subject by the artists
of chief skill, and critics of most sense, arranged in
a form so brief and clear, as to admit of their being
brought before the public for a morning’s entertain-
ment. I cannot, therefore, it seems to me, do better
than quote these two letters, or at least the import-
ant parts of them, examining the exact meaning of
each passage as it occurs. There are, in all, in The
Idler three letters on painting. Nos. 76, 79, and 82;
of these, the first is directed only against the ^jpper-
tinences of pretended connoisseurs, and is as notable
for its faithfulness, as for its wit, in the description
of the several modes of criticism in an artificial and
ignorant state of society : it is only, therefore, in
the two last papers that we find the expression of
the doctrines which it is our business to examine.
No. 79 (Saturday, Oct. 20th, 1759) begins, after a
short preamble, with the following passage :
Amongst the painters, and the writers on painting, there is
one maxim universally admitted and continually inculcated.
Imitate nature is^ the invariablefrnle : but I know none who
have explained in what manner th’s rule is to be understood ;
the sequence of which is, that every one takes it in the most
obvious sense, that objects are represented naturally when they
have such relief that they seem real. It majr appear strange,
perhaps, to hear this sense of the rule disputed ; but it must
be considered, that, if the excellency of a painter consisted
only in this kind of imitation, Painting nmst lose its rank, and
be no longer considered as a liberal art, and sister to Poetry,
this imitation being merely mechanical, in which the slowest
intellect is always sure to succeed best; for the painter of
genius cannot stoop to drudgery, in which the understanding
has no part ; and what pretence has the art to claim kindred
with^poetry but by its power over the imagination? To this
cHAt»*i] THE ‘GRAND STYLE .V $
power th« painter of genius directs biiu ; in this ^ sense , he
studies nwure, and often arrives at his end, even by being
unnatural in the confined sense of the word.
The grand style of painting requires this minute attention
to be carefully avoided, and must be kept as separate from it
as the style of poetry from that of history. (Poetical orna-
ments destroy that air of truth and plainness which ought to
characterize history ; but the very being of poetry consists in
departing from this plain narrative, and adopting every orna-
ment that will warm the imagination i.) To desire to see the
excellencies of each style united — to mingle the Dutch with
the Italian school, is to join contrarieties, which cannot subsist
together, and which destroy the efiBcacy of each other.
§ 5. We find, first, from this interesting passage,
that the writer considers the Dutch and Italian
masters as severally representative of the low and
high schools; next, that he considers the Dutch
painters as excelling in a mechanical imitation, ‘ in
which the slowest intellect is always sure to succeed
best^ and, thirdly, that he considers the Italian
painJers as excelling in a style which corresponds to
that of imaginative poetry in literature, and which
has an exclusive right to be called the grand style.
I wish that it were in my power entirely to concur
with the writer, and to enforce this opinion thus
distinctly stated. I have never been a zealous parti-
san of the Dutch School, and should rejoice in claim-
ing Reynolds’s authority for the assertion, that their
manner was one ‘ in which the slowest intellect is
always sure to succeed best But before his
authority can be so claii^ed, we must^observe exactly
the meaning of the assertion itself, and separate it
from the company of some others not perhaps so
admissible, Eirst, I say we must observe Reynolds’s
exact meaning, for (though the assertion may at first
appear singular) a man who uses accurate language
is always more liable to misinterpretation than one
1 I have put this sentence in a parenthesis, because it is incon-
sistent with the rest of the statement, and with the general
teaching of the paper ; since that which ‘ attends only to the
invariable ’ cannot certainly adopt ‘ every ornament that will
warm the imagination.’ ^ •
*6 BECEIVIII) OPINIOITS TOUCHING [part iv
who is careless in his expressions. We ma# assume
that the latter means very nearly what wk at first
suppose him to mean, for words which have been
uttered without thought may be received without
examination. But when a writer or speaker may be
fairly supposed to have considered his expressions
carefully, and, after having revolved a number of
terms in his mind, to have chosen the one which
exactly means the thing he intends to say, we may be
assured that what costs him time to select, will
require from us time to understand, and that we shall
do him wrong, unless we pause to reflect how the
word which he has actually employed differs from
other words which it seems he might have em-
ployed. It thus constantly happens that persons
themselves unaccustomed to think clearly, or speak
correctly, misunderstand a logical and careful writer,
and are actually in more danger of being misled by
language which is measured and precise, tl^ by
that which is loose and inaccurate.
§ 6. Now, in the instance before us, a person not
accustomed to good writing might very rashly con-
clude, that when Reynolds spoke of the Dutch School
as one ‘ in which the slowest intellect was sure to
succeed best he meant to say that every success-
ful Dutch painter was a fool. We have no right to
take his assertion in that sense. He says, the
slowest intellect. We have no right to assume that
he meant the wcahest. For it is true, that in order
to succeed in the Dutch stjjile, a man has need of
qualities of mind eminently deliberate and sustained.
He must be possessed of patience rather than of
power; and must feel no weariness in rfjontemplating
the expression of a single thought for several months
together. As opposed to the changeful energies of
the imagination, these mental characters may be
properly spoken of as under the general term — slow-
ness of intellect. But it by no means follows that
they are necessarily those of weak or foolish men.
We observe however, farther, that the imitation
whith Reynolds supposes to be characteristic of the
7
cHAP.i] THE ‘GRAND STYLE »
Dutch l^hool is that which gives to objects such
relief thSfc they seem real, and that he then speaks of
this art of realistic imitation as corresponding to
history in literature.
§ 7. Reynolds, therefore, seems to class these dull
works of the Dutch School under a general head, to
which they are not commonly referred — that of
Historical painting; while he speaks of the works of
the Italian school not as historical, but as poetical
painting. His next sentence will farther manifest his
meaning.
The Italian attends only to the inTariable, the great and
general ideas which are fixed and inherent in universal nature ;
the Dutch, on the contrary, to literal truth and minute exact-
ness in the detail, as I may say, of nature modified by acci-
dent. The attention to these petty peculiarities is the very
cause of this naturalness so much admired in the Dutch
pictures, which, if we suppose it to be a beauty, is certainly of
a lower order, which ought to give place to a beauty of a
superior kind, since one cannot be obtained but by departing
fromwie other.
If my opinion was asked concerning the works of Michael
Angelo, whether they would receive any advantage from
possessing this mechanical merit, 1 should not scruple to say,
they would not only receive no advantage, but would lose, in a
great measure, the effect which they now have on every mind
susceptible of great and noble ideas. His works may be said
to be all genius and soul ; and why should they be loaded with
heavy matter, which can only counteract his purpose by
retarding the progress of the imagination?
Examining carefully this and the preceding pas-
sage, we find the author’s unmistal^blo meaning to
be, that Dutch painting is history ; attending to literal
truth and ‘ minute exactness in the details of nature
modified by, accident.’ That Italian painting is
poetry, attending only to the invariable; and that
works which attend only to the invariable are full
of genius and soul; but that literal truth and exact
detail are * heavy matter which retards the progress
of the imagination.’
§ 8, This being then indisputably what Reynolds
means to tell us, let us think a little whether he is
in all respects right. And first, as he compai^s his
B KECEIVED OPINIONS TOUCHING [part iv
two kinds of painting to history and poety, let us
see how poetry and history themselves differ, in their
use of variable and invariable details. I am writing
at a window which commands a view of the head of
the Lake of Geneva; and as I look up from my paper,
to consider this point, I see, beyond it, a blue breadth
of softly moving water, and the outline of the moun-
tains above Chillon, bathed in morning mist. The
first verses which naturally come into my mind
are
A thousand feet in depth below
The massy waters meet and flow ;
So far the fathom line was sent
From Ohillon’s snow-white battlement.
Let ug see in what manner this poetical statement
is distinguished from a historical one.
It is distinguished from a truly historical state-
ment, first, in being dimply false. The water under
the castle of Chillon is not a thousand feet dee^ nor
anything like it Herein, certainly, these lines fulfil
Iteynolds’s first requirement in poetry, ‘ that it should
be inattentive to literal truth and minute exactness
in detail.’ In order, however, to make ovir compari-
son more closely in other points, let us assume that
what is stated is indeed a fact, and that it was to
be recorded, first historically, and then poetically.
Historically stating it, then, we should say : ‘ The
lake was sounded from the walls of the castle of
Chillon, and found to be a thousand feet deep.’
Now, if Reyn6lds be right fa his idea of the differ-
ence between history and poetry, we shall find that
Byron leaves out of this statement certain unneces-
sary details, and retains only the invarfeble — that is
to say, the points which the Lake of Geneva and
castle of Chillon have in common with all other lakes
and castles.
^ * MM. Mallet et Pictet, se trouvant snr le lac aupres du
chateau de ChillQn, le 6 Aoflt, 1774, plong^rent k la profoudeur
de 312 pieds un thermometre’, &c. Saussure, Voyages davit
Us Jlpes, ch&p. ii, § 33. It appears from the next paragraph,
that thermonieter was ‘ au fond du lac.’
9
CHAP. I] THE ‘GRAND STYLE’
Let us^ear, therefore :
A thousand feet in depth below
‘ Below ’? Here is, at all events, a word added
(instead of anything being taken away); invariable,
certainly in the case of lakes, but not absolutely
necessary.
The massy waters meet and flow
‘Massy’! why massy? Because deep water is
heavy. The word is a good word, but it is assuredly
an added detail, and expresses a character, not which
the Lake of Geneva has in common with all other
lakes, but which it has in distinction from those
which are narrow, or shallow.
§ 9. ‘ Meet and flow.’ Why meet and flow? Partly
to make up a rhyme ; partly to tell us that the waters
are forceful as well as massy, and changeful as well
as deep. Observe, a farther addition of details, and
of details more or less peculiar to the spot, or, accord-
ing to Reynolds’s definition, of ‘ heavy matter, retard-
ing the progress of the imagination.’
So far the fathom line was sent
Why ‘ fathom line ’? All lines for sounding are
not fathom lines. If the lake was ever sounded from
Chillon, it was probably sounded in metres, not
fathoms. This is an addition of another particular
detail, in which the only compliance with Reynolds’s
requirement is, that there is some chance of its being
an inaccurate one. • •
From Chillon’s snow-white battlement
Why ‘ snow»white ’? Because castle battlements
are not usually snow-white. This is another added
detail, and a detail quite peculiar to Chillon, and
therefore exactly the most striking word in the whole
passage.
‘ Battlement ’ ! why battlement? Because all walls
have not battlements, and the addition of the term
marks the castle to be not merely a prison, but a
fortress. • ^
10 RECEIVED OPINIONS TOUCHING [paetiv
This is a curious result. Instead of fin^g, as we
expected, the poetry distinguished from i!ae history
by the omission of details, we find it consist entirely
in the addition of details ; and instead of being charac-
terized by regard only of the invariable, we find its
whole power to consist in the clear expression of
what is singular and particular!
§ 10. The reader may pursue the investigation for
himself in other instances. He will find in every
case that a poetical is distinguished from a merely
historical statement, not by being more vague, but
more specific, and it might, therefore, at first appear
that our author’s comparison should be simply re-
versed, and that the Dutch school should be called
poetical, and the Italian historical. But the term
poetical does not appear very applicable to the
generality of Dutch painting; and a little reflection
will show us, that if the Italians represent only the
invariable, they cannot be properly compared even
to historians. For that which is incapable ofchange
has no history, and records which state only the in-
variable need not be written, and could not be read.
§ 11. It is evident, therefore, that our author has
entangled himself in some grave fallacy, by intro-
ducing this idea of invariableness as forming a dis-
tinction between poetical and historical art. What
the fallacy is, we shall discover as we proceed; but
as an invading army should not leave an untaken
fortress in its rear, we must not go on w'ith our
inquiry into the views of ileynolds until we have
settled satisfactorily the qu^^stion already suggested
to us, in what the essence of poetical treatment
really consists. For though, as we, have seen, it
certainly involves the addition of specific details, it
cannot be simply that addition which turns the his-
tory into poetry. For it is perfectly possible to add
any number of details to a historical statement, and
to make it more prosaic with every added word. As,
for instance, ‘ The lake was sounded out of a flat-
bottomed boat, near the crab tree at the corner of
the^kitchen-garden , and was found to be a thousand
11
CHAP. I] THE ‘GRAND STYLE ‘
feet nineiinches deep, with a muddy bottom.’ It
thus appears that it is not the multiplication of
details which constitutes poetry; nor their subtrac*
tion which constitutes history,, but that there must
be something either in the nature of the details them-
selves, or the method of using them, which invests
them with poetical power or historical propriety.
§ 12. It seems to me, and may seem to the reader,
strange that we should need to ask the question,
‘ ^^at is poetry?’ Here is a word we have been
using all " our lives, and, I suppose, with a very
distinct idea attached to it; and when I am now
called upon to give a definition of this idea, I find
myself at a pause. What is more singular, I do
not at present recollect hearing the question often
asked, though surely it is a very natural one; and
I never recollect hearing it answered, or even
attempted to be answered. In general, people shelter
them^lves under metaphors, and while we hear
poetry described as an utterance of the soul, an effu-
sion of Divinity, or voice of nature, or in other terms
equally elevated and obscure, we never attain any-
thing like a definite explanation of the character
which actually distinguishes it from prose.
§ 13- I come, after some embarrassment, to the
conclusion, that poetry is ‘ the suggestion, by tho
imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.’
I mean, by the noble emotions, those four principal
sacred passions : Love, Veneration, Admiration, and
Joy (this latter especiailily, if unselfish); and their
opposites : Hatred, Indignation (or Scorn), Horror,
and Grief — this last, when unselfish, becoming Com-
passion. These passions in their various combina-
tions constitute what is called ‘ poetical feeling ’,
when they are felt on noble grounds, that is, on
great and true grounds. Indignation, for instance,
is a poetical feeling, if excited by serious injury; but
it is not a poetical feeling if entertained on being
cheated out of a small sum of money. It is very
possible the manner of the cheat may have been
such as to justify considerable indignation; buVthe
12 RECEIVED OPINIOKS TOUCHING [partiv
feeling is nevertheless not poetical unless t]^ grounds
of it be large as well as just* In like manner, ener-
getic admiration may be excited in certain minds by
a display of fireworks, or a street of handsome shops;
but the feeling is not poetical, because the grounds of
it are false, and therefore ignoble. There is in reality
nothing to deserve admiration either in the firing of
packets of gunpowder, or in the display of the stocks
of warehouses. But admiration excited by the bud-
ding of a flower is a poetical feeling, because it is
impossible that this manifestation of spiritual power
and vital beauty can ever be enough admired.
§ 14. Farther, it is necessary to the existence of
/poetry that the grounds of these feelings should be
furnished by the imagination. Poetical feeling, that
is to say, mere noble emotion, .is not poetry. It is
happily inherent in all human nature deserving the
name, and is found often to be purest in the least
sophisticated. But the power of assembling, by. tie
help of the imagination, such images as willexcite
these feelings, is the power of the poet or literally of
the ' Maker ’ K
^ Take, for instance, the beautiful stanza in The Affliction of
Margaret :
I look for ghosts, but none will force
Their way to me. ’Tis falsely said
That ever there was intercourse
Between the living and the dead ;
For, surely then, I should have sight
Of him I wait for, day^and night.
With love and longing infinite.
This we call Poetry, because it is invented or made by the
writer, entering into the mind of a supposed person. IN^ext,
take an instance of the actual feeling truly*experienced and
simply expressed by a real person.
Nothing surprised me more than a woman of Argenti^re,
whose cottage I went into to ask for milk, as I came down
from the glacier of Argentiere, in the month of March, 1764.
An epidemic dysentery had prevailed in the village, and, a few
months before, had taken away from her, her father, her hus-
band, and her brothers, so that she was left alone, with three
children in the cradle. Her face had something noble in it,
and fts expression bore the seal of a calm and profound sorrow.
13
CHAP. I] THE ‘ GRAIJD STYLE ’
Now th^s power of exciting the emotions depends
of course on the richness of the imagination, and on
its choice of those images which, in combination,
will be most effective, or, for the particular work to
be done, most fit. And it is altogether impossible
for a writer not endowed with invention to conceive
what tools a true poet will make use of, or in what
way he will apply them, or what unexpected results
he will bring out by them; so that it is vain to say
that the details of poetry ought to possess, or ever
do possess, any definite character. Generally speak-
ing, poetry runs into finer and more delicate details
than prose; but the details are not poetical because
they are more delicate, but because they are em-
ployed so as to bring out an affecting result. For
instance, no one but a true poet would have thought
of exciting our pity for a bereaved father by describ-
ing his way of locking the door of his house :
B»rhaps to himself, at that moment he said,
The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead ;
But of this in my ears not a word did he speak,
And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.
After having given me milk, she asked mo whence I came, and
what I came there to do, so early in the year. When she
knew that I was of Geneva, she said to me, ‘ she could not be-
lieve that all Protestants were lost souls; that there were
many honest people among ns, and that God was too good and
too great to condemn all without distinction.’ Then, after a
moment of reflection, she addfd, in shaking h^ head, ‘ But, that
which is very strange, is that of so many who have gone away,
none have ever returned. I’, she added, with an expression of
grief, ‘ who have so mourned my husband and my brothers,
who have never ceased to think of them, who every night con-
jure tliem with beseechings to tell me where they are, and in
what state they are! Ah, surely, if they lived anywhere,
they would not leave me thus ! But, perhaps \ she added, ‘ I
am not worthy of this kindness, perhaps the pure and innocent
spirits of these children ’, and she looked at the cradle, ‘ may
have their presence, and the joy which is denied to me ." —
Saussxjbe, Voyacjes dans les Alpes, chap. xxiv.
This we do not call Poetry, merely because it is not invented,
hut the true utterance of a real person. •
14 KECEIVED OPINIONS TOUCHING [partiv
In like manner, in painting, it is altogetj^er impos-
sible to say beforehand what details a great painter
may make poetical by his use of them to excite noble
emotions : and we shall, therefore, find presently
that a painting is to be classed in the great or in-
ferior schools, not according to the kind of details
Vjhich it represents, but according to the uses for
which it employs them.
§ 15. It is only farther to be noticed, that infinite
confusion has been introduced into this subject by
the careless and illogical custom of opposing painting
to poetry, instead of regarding poetry as consisting
in a noble use, whether of colours or words. Paint-
ing is properly to be opposed to speaking or writing^
but not to poetry. Both painting and speaking are
[methods of expression. Poetry is the employment
of either for the noblest purposes.
§ 16. This question being thus far determined, w^e
may proceed with our paper in The Idler,
It is very difficult to determino the exact degree of enthu-
siasm that the arts of painting and poetry may admit. There
may, perhaps, be too great indulgence as well as too great a
restraint of imagination ; if the one produces incoherent mon-
sters, the other produces what is full as bad, lifeless insipidity.
An intimate knowledge of the passions, and good sense, but
not common sense, must at last determine its limits. It has
been thought, and I believe with reason, that Michael Angelo
sometimes transgressed those limits ; and, I think, I have seen
figures of him of which it was very difficult to determine
whether they were in the highest degree sublime or extremely
ridiculous. Sucl# faults may be%aid to be the ebullitions of
genius; but at least he had this merit, that he never was
insipid, and whatever passion his works may excite, they will
always escape contempt.
What I have had under consideration is the sublimest style,
particularly that of Michael Angelo, the Homer of painting.
Other kinds may admit of this naturalness, which of the
lowest kind is the chief merit ; but in painting, as in poetry, the
highest style has the least of common nature.
From this passage we gather three important indi-
cations of the supposed nature of the Great Style.
Th£^ it is the work of men in a state of enthusiasm.
CHAP. I] THE ‘ GRAND STYLE ’ 15
That it is like the writing of Homer; and that it
has as littfe as possible of ‘ common nature ’ in it.
§ 17. First, it is produced by men in a state of
enthusiasm. That is, by men who feel strongly and
nobly; for we do not call a strong feeling of envy^
jealousy, or ambition, enthusiasm. That is, there-
fore, by men who feel poetically. This much we
may admit, I think, with perfect safety. Great art
is produced by men who feel acutely and nobly;
and it is in some sort an expression of this personal
feeling. We can easily conceive that there may be
a sufficiently marked distinction between such art,,
and that which is produced by men who do not
feel at all, but who reproduce, though ever so
accurately, yet coldly, like human mirrors, the scenes
which pass before their eyes.
§ 18. Secondly, Great Art is like the writing of
Homer, and this chiefly because it has little of
‘ common nature ’ in it. We are not clearly informed
what meant by common nature in this passage.
Homer seems to describe a great deal of what is com-
mon; — cookery, for instance, very carefully in all its
processes. I suppose the passage in the Iliad which,,
on the whole, has excited most admiration, is that
which describes a wife’s sorrow at parting from her
husband, and a child’s fright at its father’s helmet;
and I hope, at least, the former feeling may be con-
sidered ‘ common nature *, But the true greatness
of Homer’s style is, doubtless, held by our author to
consist in his imaginatio:|S of things ^ot only un-
common but impossible (such as spirits in brazen
armour, or monsters with heads of men and bodies
of beasts), and in his occasional delineations of the*
human character and form in their utmost, or heroic,
strength and beauty. We gather then on the whole,,
that a painter in the Great Style must be enthus-
iastic, or full of emotion, and must paint the human
form in its utmost strength and beauty, and perhaps-
certain impossible forms besides, liable by persons-
not in an equally enthusiastic state of mind to be
looked upon as in some degree absurd. This I pr^ft-
16 THE ‘ GRAND STYLE ^ [part iv
4siiime to be Reynolds’s meaning, and to be all that
he intends us to gather from his comparison of the
Great Style with the writings of Homer. But if that
comparison be a just one in all respects, surely two
other corollaries ought to be drawn from it, namely,
— ^first, that these Heroic or Impossible images are
to* be mingled with others very unheroic and very
possible; and, secondly, that in the representation
of the Heroic or Impossible forms, the greatest care
must be taken in finishing the details^ so that a
painter must not be satisfied with painting well the
countenance and the body of his hero, but ought
to spend the greatest part of his time (as Homer
the greatest number of verses) in elaborating the
sculptured pattern on his shield,
§ 19. Let us, however, proceed with our paper :
One may very safely recommend a little more enthusiasm
to the modem painters ; iv/o much is certainly not the vice of
the present age. The Italians seem to have been continually
declining in this respect, from the time of Michael ?^ngelo to
that of Carlo Maratti, and from thence to the very bathos of
insipidity to which they are now sunk, so that there is no need
of remarking, that where I mentioned the Italian painters in
opposition to the Dutch, I mean not the moderns, but the
heads of the old Roman and Bologniau schools ; nor did I
mean to include, in my idea of an Italian painter, the Yene-
tian school, which may he said to be the Dutch part of the
Italian genius, I have only to add a word of advice to the
painters, that, however excellent they may be in painting
naturally, they would not flatter themselves very much upon
it ; and to the connoisseurs, that when they see a cat or a fiddle
painted so finely, that, as the pflrase is, it looks as if you could
take it up, they would not fo' that reason immediately
compare the painter to Raffaelle and Michael Angelo.
, In this passage there are four points chiefly to be
remarked. The first, that in the year 1759, the
Italian painters were, in our author’s opinion, sunk
in ihe very bathos of insipidity. The second, that
the Venetian painters, i.e. Titian, Tintoret, and
Veronese, are, in our author’s opinion, to be classed
with the Dutch; that is to say, are painters in a
sijrle ‘ in which the slowest intellect is always sure
OF REALIZATION
CHAP, n]
^7
to succeed best *. Thirdly, that painting naturally it
not a difficult thing, nor one on which a painter
should pride himself. And, finally, that connois-
seurs, seeing a cat or a fiddle successfully painted,
ought not therefore immediately to compare the
painter to Raphael or Michael Angelo.
Yet Raphael painted fiddles very carefully in the
foreground of ‘his St Cecilia — ^so carefully, that they
quite look as if they might be taken up. So care-
fully, that 1 never yet looked at the picture with-
out wishing that somebody would take them up,
and out of the way. And I am under a very strong
persuasion that Raphael did not think painting
‘ naturally ’ an easy thing. It will be well to
examine into this point a little; and for the present,
with the reader’s permission, we will pass over the
first two statements in this passage (touching the
character of Italian art in 1759, and of Venetian art
in general), and immediately examine some of the
evideuise existing as to the real dignity of ‘ natural ’
painting— that is to say, of painting carried to the
point at which it reaches a deceptive appearance of
reality.
CHAPTER II
OF REALIZATION
§ 1. In the outset of this inquiry, the reader must
thoroughly understand tnat we are nof now consider-
ing what is to be painted, but how far it is to be
painted. Not whether Raphael does right in repre-
senting angels playing upon violins, or whether
Veronese does right in allowing cats and monkeys, to
join the company of kings : but whether, supposing
the subjects rightly chosen, they ought on the .qanvass
to look like real angels with real violin^, anif sub-
stantial cats looMng at veritable kings; or only like
imaginary angels with soundless violins, ideal cats,
and unsubstantial kings.
M. P., III.
c
18
OF REALIZATION [part iv
Now, from the first moment when painting began
to be a subject of literary inquiry and general criti-
cism, I cannot remember any writer, not professedly
artistical, who has not, more or less, in one part of
his book or another, countenanced the idea that the
great end of art is to produce a deceptive resemblance
of reality. It may be, indeed, that we shall find
the writers, through many pages, explaining prin-
ciples of ideal beauty, and professing great delight
in the evidences of imagination. But whenever a
picture is to be definitely described — whenever the
writer desires to convey to others some impression
of an extraordinary excellence, all praise is wound
up with some such statements as these : ‘ It was so
exquisitely painted that you expected the figures
to move and speak; you approached the flowers to
enjoy their smell, and stretched your hand towards
the fruit which had fallen from the branches. You
shrunk back lest the s^vord of the warrior should in-
deed descend, and turned away your head tbat you
might not witness the agonies of the expiring
martyr ! ’
§ 2. In a large number of instances, language such
as this will be found to be merely a clumsy effort
to convey to others a sense of the admiration, of
which the writer does not understand the real cause
in himself. A person is attracted to a picture by the
beauty of its colour, interested by the liveliness of
its story, and touched by certain countenances or
details which remind him ol friends whom he loved,
or scenes in which he delighted. He naturally sup-
poses that what gives him so much pleasure must
be a notable example of the painter’s skill; but he
is ashamed to confess, or perhaps does not know,
that he is so much a child as to be fond of bright
colours and amusing incidents; and he is quite un-
conscious of the associations which have so secret
and inewtable a power over his heart. He casts
about for the cause of his delight, and can discover
no other than that he thought tne picture like reality.
^ 3. In another, perhaps a still larger number of
OF BEALIZATION
19
CHAP. Il]
oases, such language will be found to be that of
simple ignorance — ^the ignorance of persons whose
position in life compels them to speak of art with-
out having any real enjoyment of it. It is inex-
cusably required from people of the world, that they
should see merit in Claudes and Titians; and the
only merit which many persons can either see or
conceive in them is, that they must be ‘ like nature
§ 4. In other cases, the deceptive power of the
art is really felt to be a source of interest and amuse-
ment. This is the case with a large number of the
collectors of Dutch pictures. They enjoy seeing what
is flat made to look round, exactly as a child enjoys
a trick of legerdemain; they rejoice in flies wnich
the spectator vainly attempts to brush away, and in
dew which he endeavours to dry by putting the
picture in the sun. They* take it for the greatest
compliment to their treasures that they should be
mistaken for windows; and think the parting of
Abraham and Hagar adequately represented, if BLagar
seems to be really crying.
It is against critics and connoisseurs of this latter
stamp (of whom, in the year 1759, the juries of art
were for the post part composed) that the essay of
Reynolds, which we have been examining, was justly
directed. But Reynolds had not sufficiently con-
sidered that neither the men of this class, nor of the
two other classes above described, constitute the
entire body of those who praise Art for its realization ;
and that the holding of J>his apparently shallow and
vulgar opinion cannot, in all cases, be attributed to
the want either of penetration, sincerity, or sense.
The collectors of Gerard Dows and Hobbimas may '
be passed by with a smile; and the affectations of
Walpole and simplicities of Vasari dismissed with
contempt or with compassion. But very different
men from these have held precisely the same lan-
guage; and, one amongst the rest, whose authority
is absolutely, and in all points, overwhelming.
§ 5. There was probably never a period in which
the influence of art over the minds of men seeijed
20 OF REALIZATION [part iv
to depend less on its merely imitative power, than
the close of the thirteenth century. No painting or
sculpture at that time reached more than a rude
resemblance of reality. Its despised perspective, im-
perfect chiaroscuro, and unrestrained flights of fan-
tastic imagination, separated the artist’s work from
nature by an interval which there was no attempt
to" disguise, and little to diminish. And yet, at this
very period, the greatest poet of that, or perhaps of
any other age, and the attached friend of its greatest
painter, who must over and over again have held
full and free conversation with him respecting the
objects of his art, speaks in the following terms of
painting, supposed to be carried to its highest per-
fection :
Qual di pennel fu maestro, e di stile
Che ritraesse F ombre, e i tratti, ch’ ivi
Mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile.
Morti li morti, e i vivi parean vivi :
Non vide me’ di me, chi vide il vero,
Quant’ io calcai, fin che chinato givi.
Dante, Fnrgatorio, canto xii, 1. 64.
What master of the pencil, or the style,
Had traced the shades and lines that might have made
The subtlest workman wonder ? Dead^ the dead.
The living seemed cdive ; with clearer view
His eye beheld, not, who beheld the truth.
Than mine what I did tread on, while I went.
Low bending. Caret.
Dante has here clearly no, other idea of the highest
art than that it should bring back, as in a mirror or
vision, the aspect of things passed or absent. The
scenes of which he speaks are, on the pavement, for
over represented by angelic power, so that the souls
which traverse this circle of the rock may see them,
as if the years of the world had been rolled back,
and they again stood beside the actors in the moment
of action. Nor do I think that Dante’s authority is
absolutely necessary to compel us to admit that
such art as this might indeed be the highest possible.
Whatever delight we may have been in the habit of
OF REALIZATION
21
CHAP, n]
taking in pictures, if it were but truly offered to us,
to remove at our will the canvass from the frame,
and in lieu of it to behold, fixed for ever, the image
of some of those mighty scenes which it has been our
way to make mere themes for the artist’s fancy; if,
for instance, we could again behold the Magdalene
receiving her pardon at Christ’s feet, or the disciples
sitting with Him at the table of Emmaus; and this
not feebly nor fancifully, but as if some silver mirror,
that had leaned against the wall of the chamber, had
been miraculously commanded to retain for ever the
colours that had flashed upon it for an instant—
would we not part with our picture — Titian’s or
Veronese’s though it might be?
§ 6. Yes, the reader answers, in the instance of
such scenes as these, but not if the scene repre-
sented were uninteresting. Not, indeed, if it were
utterly vulgar or painful; but we are not yet certain
that t^ art which represents what is vulgar or painful
is itseli of much value; and with respect to the art
whose aim is beauty, even of an inferior order, it seems
that Dante’s idea of its perfection has still much
evidence in its favour. For among persons of native
good sense, and courage enough to speak their minds,
we shall often find a considerable degree of doubt
as to the use of art, in consequence of their habitual
comparison of it with reality. ‘ What is the use,
to me, of the painted landscape?’ they will ask :
‘ I see more beautiful and perfect landscapes every
day of my life in my forenoon walk. ’ ‘ What is
the use, to me, of the painted effigy of hero or
beauty? I can see a stamp of higher heroism, and
light of purer beauty, on the faces round me, utterly
inexpressible by the highest human skill.’ Now, it
is evident that to persons of this temper the only
valuable pictures would indeed be mirrors, reflecting
permanently the images of the things in which they
took delight, and of the faces that they loved.
‘ Nay but the reader interrupts (if he is of the
Idealist school), ‘ I deny that more beautiful things
are to be seen in nature than in art ; on the contriifry,
22
OF REALIZATION [part iv
everything in nature is faulty, and art represents
nature as perfected.* Be it so. Must, therefore,
this perfected nature be imperfectly represented?
Is it absolutely required of the painter, who has con-
ceived perfection, that he should so paint it as to
look only like a picture? Or is not Dante’s view of
Tche matter right even here, and would it not be
well that the perfect conception of Pallas should
be so given as to look like Pallas herself, rather than
merely like the picture of Pallas?
§ 7, It is not easy for us to answer this question
rightly, owing to the difficulty of imagining any art
which should reach the perfection supposed. Our
actual powers of imitation are so feeble that wherever
deception is attempted, a subject of a comparatively
low or confined order must be chosen. I do not
enter at present into the inquiry how far the powers
of imitation extend; but assuredly up to the present
period they have been so limited that it is^ hardly
possible for us to conceive a deceptive art embrac-
ing a high range of subject. But let the reader
make the effort, and consider seriously what he
would give at any moment to have the power of
arresting the fairest scenes, those which so often
rise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud
in its fading, the leaf in its trembling, and the
shadows in their changing; to bid the fitful foam
be fixed upon the river, and the ripples be ever-
lasting upon the lake; and then to bear away with
him no darkefaed or feeblef sun-stain (though even
that is beautiful), but a counterfeit which should
seem no counterfeit — the true and perfect image of
life indeed. Or rather (for the full majesty of such
a power is not thus sufficiently expressed) let him
consider that it would be in efiect nothing else than
a capacity of transporting himself at any moment
into any scene — a gift as great as can be possessed
by a disembodied spirit : and suppose, also, this
necromancy embracing not only the present but the
past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into the
vefy bodily presence of men long since gathered to
OF REALIZATION
23
CHAP. Il]
the dust; to behold them in act as they lived, but —
with greater privilege than ever was granted to the
companions of those transient acts of life — to see
them fastened at our will in the gesture and expres-
sion of an instant, and stayed, on the eve of some
great deed, in immortality of burning purpose. Con-
ceive, so far as it is possible, such power as this,
and then say whether the art which conferred it is
to be spoken lightly of, or whether we should not
rather reverence, as half divine, a gift which would
go so far as to raise us into the rank, and invest
us with the felicities, of angels?
Yet such would imitative art be in its perfection.
Not by any means an easy thing, as Reynolds sup-
poses it. Far from being easy, it is so utterly be-
yond all human power that we have difficulty even
in conceiving its nature or results — the best art we
as yet possess comes so far short of it.
§ 8. But we must not rashly come to the con-
clusidh that such art would, indeed, be the highest
possible. There is much to be considered hereafter
on the other side : the only conclusion we are as
yet warranted in forming is, that Reynolds had no
right to speak lightly or contemptuously of imitative
art; that in fact, when he did so, he had not con-
ceived its entire nature, but was thinking of some
vulgar conditions of it, which were the only ones
known to him, and that, therefore, his whole endeav-
our to explain the difference between great and mean
art has been disappointed; that has involved
himself in a crowd of theories, whose issue he had
not foreseen, and committed himself to conclusions
which he never intended. There is an instinctive
consciousness in his own mind of the difference be-
tween high and low art; but he is utterly incapable
of explaining it, and every effort which he makes to
do so involves him in unexpected fallacy and ab-
surdity. It is not true that Poetry does not concern
herself with minute details. It is not true that high
art seeks only the Invariable. It is not true that
imitative art is an easy thing. It is not true jbhat
24
OF REAIilZATION [part iv
the faithful rendering of nature is an employment
in which ‘ the slowest intellect is likely to succeed
best All these successive assertions are utterly
false and untenable, while the plain truth, a truth
lying at the very door, has all the while escaped
him — ^that which was incidentally stated in the pre-
ceding chapter — ^namely, that the difierence between
great and mean art lies, not in definable methods of
handling, or styles of representation, or choices of
subjects, but wholly in the nobleness of the end to
which the effort of the painter is addressed. We
cannot say that a painter is great because he paints
boldly, or paints delicately; because he generalizes
or particularizes; because he loves detail, or because
he disdains it. He is great if, by any of these means,
he has laid open noble truths, or aroused noble
emotions. It does not matter whether he paint the
petal of a rose, or the chasms of a precipice, so that
Love and Admiration attend him as he labours, and
wait for ever upon his work. It does not iliatter
whether he toil for months upon a few inches of his
canvass, or cover a palace front with colour in a
day, so only that it be with a solemn purpose that
he has filled his heart with patience, or urged his
hand to haste. And it does not matter whether he
seek for his subjects among peasants or nobles,
among the heroic or the simple, in courts or in fields,
so cipy that he behold all things with a thirst for
beauty, and a hatred of meanness and vice. There
are, indeed, certain methods ^of representation which
are usually adopted by the most active minds, and
certain characters of subjeco usually delighted in
by the noblest hearts; but it is quite possible, quite
easy, to adopt the manner of painting without sharing
the activity of mind, and to imitate the choice of
subject without possessing the nobility of spirit;
while, on the other hand, it is altogether impossible
to foretell on what strange objects the strength of a
great man will sometimes be concentrated, or by
what strange means he will sometimes express him-
selfy So that true criticism of art never can consist
25
CHAP, m] GREATNESS OF STYLE
in the mere application of rules; it can be just only
when it is founded on quick sympathy with the in-
numerable instinets and changeful efforts of human
nature, chastened and guided by unchanging love of
all things that God has created to be beautiful, and
pronounced to be good.
CHAPTER III
OP THE REAL NATURE OP GREATNESS OF STYLE
§ 1. I DOUBT not that the reader was ill-satisfied
with the conclusion arrived at in the last chapter.
That ‘ great art ’ is art which represents what is
beautiful and good, may not seem a very profound
discovery; and the main question may be thought
to have been all the time lost sight of, namely,
‘ What is beautiful, and what is good?’ No; those
are no? the main, at least not the first questions;
on the contrary, our subject becomes at once opened
and simplified as soon as we have left those the
only questions. For observe, our present task, ac-
cording to our old plan, is merely to investigate the
relative degrees of the beautiful in the art of different
masters; and it is an encouragement to be con-
vinced, first of all, that what is lovely will also be
great, and what is pleasing, noble. Nor is the lidn-
clusion so much a matter of course as it at first
appears, for, surprising a6 the statem^t may seem,
all the confusion into which Reynolds has plunged
both himself and his readers, in the essay we have
been examining, results primarily from a doubt in
his own mind as to the existence of beauty at all.
In the next paper I alluded to, No. 82 (which needs
not, however, to be examined at so great length), he
calmly attributes the whole influence of beauty to
custom, saying, that ‘ he has no doubt, if we were
more used to deformity than to beauty, deformity
would then lose the idea now annexed to it, and take
that of beauty; as if the whole world shall agupe
26 THE REAL NATURE OF [part ivi
that Yes and No should change their meanings. Yes
would then deny, and No would affirm I’
§ 2. The world does, indeed, succeed — oftener than
is, perhaps, altogether well for the world — in making
Yes mean No, and No mean Yes But the world
has never succeeded, nor ever will, in making itself
delight in black clouds more than in blue sky, or
love the dark earth better than the rose that grows
from it. Happily for mankind, beauty and ugliness
are as positive in their nature as physical pain and
pleasure, as light and darkness, or as life and death;
and, though they may be denied or misunderstood in
many fantastic ways, the most subtle reasoner will
at last find that colour and sweetness are still attrac-
tive to him, and that no logic will enable him to
think the rainbow sombre, or the violet scentless.
But the theory that beauty was merely a result of
custom was very common in Johnson’s time. Gold-
smith has, I think, expressed it with more force and
wit than any other Tvriter, in various pas^ges of
The Citizen of the World. And it was, indeed, a
curious retribution of the folly of the world of art,
which for some three centuries had given itself reck-
lessly to the pursuit of beauty, that at last it should
be led to deny the very existence of what it had
so morbidly and passionately sought. It was as if
a child should leave its home to pursue the rainbow,
and then, breathless and hopeless, declare that it
did not exist. Nor is the lesson less useful which
may be gain^ in observing the adoption of such a
theory by Reynolds himself. It shows how com-
pletely an artist may be unconscious of the principles
of his own work, and how he may be led by instinct
to do all that is right, while he is misled by false
logic to say all that is wrong. For nearly every
word that Reynolds wrote was contrary to his own
practice; he seems to have been born to teach all
error by his precept, and all excellence by his ex-
ample; he enforced with his lips generalization and
idealism, while with his pencil he was tracing the
€’♦ ’ Del * no per li danar, vi ‘ si ’ far ita.
27
cHAP.m] GREATl^ESS OF STYLE
patterns of the dresses of the belles of his day ; he
exhorted his pupils to attend only to the invariable,
while he himself was occupied in distinguishing every
variation of womanly temper; and ne denied the
existence of the beautiful, at the same instant that
he arrested it as it passed, and perpetuated it for
ever,
§ 8. But we must not quit the subject here. How-
ever inconsistently or dimly expressed, there is, in-
deed, some truth in that commonly accepted dis-
tinction between high and low art. That a thing
should be beautiful is not enough; there is, as we
said in the outset, a higher and lower range of
beauty, and some ground for separating into various
and unequal ranks painters who have, nevertheless,
each in his several way, represented something that
was beautiful or good.
Nor, if we would, can we get rid of this conviction.
We hf,ve at all times some instinctive sense that
the function of one painter is greater than that of
another, even supposing each equally successful in
his own way; and we feel that, if it were possible
to conquer prejudice, and do away with the iniquities
of personal feeling, and the insufficiencies of limited
knowledge, we should all agree in this estimate, and
be able to place each painter in his right rank,
measuring them by a true scale of nobleness. We
feel that the men in the higher classes of the scale
would be, in the full sense of the word. Great — men
whom one would give ftiuch to see the faces of but
for an instant; and that those in the lower classes
of the scale (though none were admitted but who
had true merit of some kind) would be very small
men, not greatly exciting either reverence or curi-
osity. And with this fixed instinct in our minds,
we permit our teachers daily to exhort their pupils
to the cultivation of ‘ great art ’ — ^neither they nor
we having any very clear notion as to what the
greatness consists in ; but sometimes inclining to
think it must depend on the space of the canvass,
and that art on a scale of 6 feet by 10 is something
,0 THE REAL NATURE OP [part iM
spiritually separated from that on a scale of 3 feet
by 6; — sometimes holding it to consist in painting
the nude body, rather than the body decently clothed;
— sometimes being convinced that it is connected
with the study of past history, and that the art is
only great which represents what the painter never
SAW, and about which he knows nothing; — and some-
times being firmly persuaded that it consists in
generally finding fault with, and endeavouring to
mend, whatsoever the Divine Wisdom has made.
All which various errors, having yet some motes
and atoms of truth in the make of each of them,
deserve some attentive analysis, for they come under
that general law — that ‘ the corruption of the best
is the worst \ There are not worse errors going than
these four; and yet the truth they contain, and the
instinct which urges many to preach them, are at
the root of all healthy growth in art. We ruin one
young painter after another by telling him to^follow
great art without knowing, ourselves, what greatness
is; and yet the feeling that it verily is something,
and that there are depths and breadths, shallows
and narrows, in the matter, is all that we have to
look to, if we would ever make our art serviceable
to ourselves or others. To follow art for the sake
of being a great man, and therefore to cast about
continually for some means of achieving position or
attracting admiration, is the surest way of ending
in total extinction. And yet it is only by honest
reverence for art itself, and* by great self-respect in
the practice of it, that it can be rescued from
dilettantism, raised to approved honourableness, and
brought to the proper work it has to accomplish in
the service of man.
§ 4. Let us therefore look into the facts of the
thing, not with any metaphysical, or otherwise vain
and troublesome effort at acuteness, but in a plain
way; for the facts themselves are plain enough,
and may be plainly stated, only the difficulty is that
out of these facts, right and left, the different forms
of »iisapprehension branch into grievous complexity.
cHAP.m] GREATNESS OF STYLE 29
and branch so far and wide, that if once we try to
follow them, they will lead ns quite from our mark
into other separate, though not less interesting dis-
cussions. The best way will be therefore, I think,
to sketch out at once in this chapter, the different
characters which really constitute * greatness ’ of
style, and to indicate the principal directions of the
out branching misapprehensions of them; then, in
the succeeding chapters, to take up in succession
those which need more talk about them, and follow
out at leisure whatever inquiries they may suggest.
§ 6. I. Choice of Noble Subject. Greatness of
style consists, then : first, in the habitual choice of
subiects of thought which involve wide interests and
profound passions, as opposed to those which involve
narrow interests and slight passions. The style is
greater or less in exact proportion to the nobleness
of the interests and passions involved in the subject.
The habitual choice of sacred subjects, such as the
Nativity, Transfiguration, Crucifixion (if the choice be
sincere) , implies that the painter has a natural disposi-
tion to dwell on the highest thoughts of which human-
ity is capable ; it constitutes him so far forth a painter
of the highest order, as, for instance, Leonardo, in
his painting of the Last Supper : he who delights in
representing the acts or meditations of great men,
as, for instance, Raphael painting the School of
Athens, is, so far forth, a painter of the second
order : he who represents the passions and events
of ordinary life, of the third. And in this ordinary
life, he who represents deep thoughts and sorrows,
as, for instance. Hunt, in his Claudio and Isabella,
and such other works, is of the highest rank in his
sphere; and he who represents the slight malignities
and passions of the drawing-room, as, for instance,
LesUe, of the second rank; he who represents the
sports of boys or simplicities of clowns, as Webster
or Teniers, of the third rank; and he who represents
brutalities and vices (for delight in them, and not
for rebuke of them), of no rank at ail, or rather of
a negative rank, holding a certain order in the abjss.
; m the real nature of [part iv,
§ 6. The reader will, I hope, understand how
much importance is to be attached to the sentence
in the first parenthesis, ‘ if the choice be sincere
for choice of subject is, of course, only available as
a criterion of the rank of the painter, when it is
made from the heart. Indeed, in the lower orders
of painting, the choice is always made from such
heart as the painter has; for his selection of the
brawls of peasants or sports of children can, of
course, proceed only from the fact that he has more
sympathy with such brawls or pastimes than with
nobler subjects. But the choice of the higher kind
of subjects is often insincere; and may, therefore,
afford no real criterion of the painter’s rank. The
greater number of men who have lately painted
religious or heroic subjects have done so in mere
ambition, because they had been taught that it was
a good thing to be a ‘ high art ’ painter; and the
fact is that, in nine cases out of ten, the so-called
historical or ‘ high art ’ painter is a person infinitely
inferior to the painter of flowers or still life. He is,
in modern times, nearly always a man who has
peat vanity without pictorial capacity, and differs
from the landscape or fruit painter merely in mis-
understanding and overestimating his own powers.
He mistakes his vanity for inspiration, his ambition
for greatness of soul, and takes pleasure in what he
calls ‘ the ideal \ merely because he has neither
humility nor capacity enough to comprehend the
real. ^
§ 7. But alfo observe, it is not enough even that
the choice be sincere. It must also be wiee. It
happens very often that a man of weak intellect,
sincerely desiring to do what is good and useful, will
devote himself to high art subjects because he thinks
them the only ones on which time and toil can be
usefully spent, or, sometimes, because they are
really the only ones he has pleasure in contemplating.
But not having intellect enough to enter into the
minds of truly peat men, or to imagine great events
as they really happened, he cannot become a great
oHAP.m] GBEATNESS OF STILE U
painter; he degrades the subjects he intended to
honour, and his work is more utterly thrown away,
and his rank as an artist in reality lower, than if he
had devoted himself to the imitation of the simplest
objects of natural history. The works of Overbeok
are a most notable instance of this form of error.
§ 8, It must also be remembered, that in nearly
all the great periods of art the choice of subject has
not been left to the painter. His employer— abbot,
baron, , or monarch — determined for him whether
he should earn his bread by making cloisters bright
with choirs of saints, painting coats of arms on
leaves of romances, or decorating presence-chambers
with complimentary mythology ; and his own
personal feelings are ascertainable only by watching,
in the themes assigned to him, what are the points
in which he seems to take most pleasure. Thus, in
the prolonged ranges of varied subjects with which
Benozzo Gozzoli decorated the cloisters of Pisa, it
is easy •to see that love of simple domestic incident,
sweet landscape, and glittering ornament, prevails
slightly over the solemn elements of religious feel-
ing, which, nevertheless, the spirit of the age in-
stilled into him in such measure as to form a very
lovely and noble mind, though still one of the second
order. In the work of Orcagna, an intense solemnity
and energy in Ihe sublimest groups of his figures,
fading away as he touches inferior subjects, indicates
that his home was among the archangels, and his
rank among the first oj the sons of men; while
Correggio, in the sidelong grace, artificial smiles, and
purple languors of his saints, indicates the inferior
instinct which would have guided his choice in quite
other directions, had it not been for the fashion of
the age, and the need of the day.
§ 9. It will follow, of course, from the above con-
siderations, that the choice which characterises the
school of high art is seen as much in the treatment
of a subject as in its selection, and that the expression
of the thoughts of the persons represented will always
be the first thing considered by the painter wno
THE EEAIi IJATUBE OP [paet rwl
IvortMly enters that highest school. For the artist
who sincerely chooses the noblest subject will also
chcfcsp cMeny to represent what makes that sub-
ject noble, namely, the various heroic or other
.noble emotions of the persons represented. If, in-
iStfead.of this, the artist seeks only to make his picture
agreeable by the Composition of its masses and
colours, or by any other merely pictorial merit, as
fine, drawing of limbs, it is evident, not only that
any other subject would have answered his purpose
as well, but that he is unfit to approach the subject
he hae chosen, '"because he cannot enter into its
deepest meaning, and therefore cannot in reality have
chosen ii for that meaning. Nevertheless, while the
expression is always to be the first thing considered,
all Other merits must be added to the utmost of the
painter's power; for until he can both colour and
draw beautifully he has no business to consider him-
self a painter at all, far less to attempt the noblest
subjects of painting; and, w'hen he has once pos-
sessed himself of these powers, he will naturally
and fitly employ them to deepen and perfect the
inmression madje by the sentiment of his subject.
The perfect unison of expression, as the painter’s
main purpose, with the full and natural exertion of
his pictorial power in the details of the work, is
found only in the old Pre-Eaphaelite periods, and
in the modern Pre-llaphaelite school. In the works
of Giotto, Angelico, Orcagna, John Bellini, and one
or two more, these two cgnditipns of high art are
..entirely fulfilled, so far as tjie knowledge of those
days enabled them to be fulfilled ; and in the modern
Pre-Raphaelite school they are fulfilled nearly to
the uttermost. Hunt’s Light of the World, is, I
believe, the most perfect instance of expressional
purpose with technical power, which the world has
yet produced.
§ 10. Now in the Post-Raphaelite period of ancient
art, and in the spurious high art of modem times,
two broad forms of ert-or divide the schools ; the one
consisting in (A) the superseding of expression by
cJHAP.in] i&REATNEgS'OF STILE U
technical excellence, and the other in (B) the super-
seding of technical exceiUence by expression/
(A). Superseding expression by technical excel-
lence. — This takes place most franMy, and therefore
most innocently, in the work of the Venetians. They
very nearly ignore expression altogether? directing
their aim exclusively to the rendering of external
truths of colour and form, Paul Veronese will make
the Magdalene wash the feet of Christ with a coun-
tenance as absolutely unmoved as that of any ordinary
servant bringing a ewer to her master, and will
introduce 4he supper at Emmaus as a background
to the ^rtraits of two children playing with a dog.
Of the wrongness or rightness of such a proceeding
we shall reason in another place; at present we
have to note it merely as displacing the Venetian
work from the highest or expressional rank of art-
But the error is generally made in a more subtle
and dangerous way. The artist deceives himself into
the idtja that he is doing all he can to elevate his
subject by treating it under rules of art, introducing
into it accurate science, and collecting for it the
beauties of (so called) ideal form; whereas he may,
in reality, be all the while sacrificing his subject to,
his own vanity or pleasure, and losing truth, noble-
ness, and impressiveness for the sake of delightful
lines or creditable pedantries. v
§ 11. (B). Superseding technical excellence by
expression. — This is usually done under the influence
of another kind of vanity. The artist desires that
men should think he has an elevated soul, affects
to despise the ordinary excellence of art, contem-
plates with separated egotism the course of his own
imaginations or sensations, and refuses to look at
the real facts round about him, in order that he
may adore at leisure the shadow of himself. He
lives in an element of what he calls tender emotions
and lofty aspirations; which are, in fact, nothing
more than very ordinary weaknesses or instincts/
contemplated through a mist of pride, A larger
range of modern German art comes under this head.*
M. p., ni. B *
THE BEAL NATURE OF [paet iv
A more interesting and respectable form of this
error is fallen into by some truly earnest men, who,
finding their powers not adequate to the attainment
of great artistical excellence, but adequate to render-
ing, up to a certain point, the expression of the
human countenance, devote themselves to that object
alo;ie, abandoning effort in other directions, and
executing the accessaries of their pictures feebly or
carelessly. With these are associated another group
of philosophical painters, who suppose the artistical
merits of other parts adverse to the expression, as
drawing the spectator’s attention away from it, and
who paint in grey colour, and imperfect light and
shade, by way of enforcing the purity of their con-
ceptions. Both these classes of conscientious but
narrow-minded artists labour under the same grievous
mistake of imagining that wilful fallacy can ever be
either pardonable or helpful. They forget that
Colour, if used at all, must be either true or false,
and that what they call chastity, dignity, and re-
serve is, to the eye of any person accustomed to
nature, pure, bold, and impertinent falsehood. It
does not in the eyes of any soundly minded man,
exalt the expression of a female face that the cheeks
should be painted of the colour of clay, nor does it
in the least enhance his reverence for a saint to
find the scenery around him deprived, by his pre-
sence, of sunshine. It is an important consolation,
however, to reflect that no artist ever fell into any
of these last jthree errors (wnder head B) who had
really the capacity of becoming a great painter. No
man ever despised colour who could produce it; and
the error of these sentimentalists and philosophers is
not so much in the choice of their manner of paint-
ing, as in supposing themselves capable of painting
at all. Some of them might have made efficient
sculptors, but the greater number had their mission
in some other sphere than that of art, and would
have found, in works of practical charity, better em-
ployment for their gentleness and sentimentalism,
th^ in denying to human beauty its colour, and
m
CHAP.m] GREATNESS OF STYLE
to natural scenery its light; in depriving heaven of
its blue, and earth of its bloom, valour of its glow,
and modesty of its blush.
§ 12. II. Love op Beauty. The second charac-
teristic of the great school of art is, that it introduces
in the conception of its subject as much beauty as
is possible, consistently with truth
1 As here, for the first time, I am obliged to use the terms
Truth and Beauty in a kind of opposition. I must therefore
stop for a moment to state clearly the relation ot these two
qualities of art ; and to protest against the vulgar and foolish
habit of confusing truth and beauty with each other. People
with shallow powers of thought, desiring to flatter themselves
with the sensation of having attained profundity, are continu-
ally doing the most serious mischief by introducing confusion
into plain matters, and then valuing themselves on being con-
founded. Nothing is more common than to hear people who
desire to be thought philosophical, declare that ‘beauty is
truth’, and ‘truth is beauty’. I would most earnestly beg
every sensible person who hears such an assertion made, to nip
the germinating philosopher in his ambiguous bud ; and beg
him, if he really believes his own assertion, never thence-
forward to use two words for the same thing. The fact is,
truth and beauty are entirely distinct, though often related,
things. One is a property of statements, the other of objects.
The statement that * two and two make four ’ is true, but it is
neither beautiful nor ngly, for it is invisible ; a rose is lovely,
but it is neither true nor false, for it is silent. That which
shows nothing cannot be fair, and that which asserts nothing
cannot be false. Even the ordinary use of the words false and
true, as applied to artificial and real things, is inaccurate. An
artificial rose is not a * false ’ ro.se, it is not a rose at all. The
falseness is in the person wh% states, or induces the belief, that
it IS a rose.
Now, therefore, in things concerning art, the words true and
false are only to be rightly used while the picture is considered
as a statement of facts. The painter asserts that this which
he has painted is the form of a dog, a man, or a tree. If it be
not the form of a dog, a man, or a tree, the painter’s statement
is false ; and, therefore, we justly speak of a false line, or
false colour ; not that any line or colour can in themselves be
false, but they become so when they convey a statement that
they resemble something which they do not resemble. But
the beauty of the lines or colours is wholly independent of any
such statement. They may be beautiful lines, though quite
inaccurate, and ugly lines though quite faithful. A pictj^re
is THE REAL NATURE OF [part iV.
For instance, in any subject consisting of a num-
ber of figures, it will make as many of those figures
beautiful as the faithful representation of humanity
will admit. It will not deny the facts of ugliness or
decrepitude, or relative inferiority and superiority of
feature as necessarily manifested in a crowd, but
it will, so far as it is in its power, seek for and
dwell upon the fairest forms, and in all things insist
on the beauty that is in them, not on the ugliness.
In this respect, schools of art become higher in
exact proportion to the degree in which they appre-
hend and love the beautiful. Thus, Angelico,
intensely loving all spiritual beauty, will be of the
highest rank; and Paul Veronese and Correggio,
intensely loving physical and corporeal beauty, of
the second rank; and Albert Diirer, Rubens, and in
general the Northern artists, apparently insensible
to beauty, and caring only for truth, whether shapely
or not, of the third rank; and Teniers and Salvator,
Caravaggio, and other such worshippers af the
depraved, of no rank, or, as we said before, of a
certain order in the abyss.
§ 13. The corruption of the schools of high art,
BO far as this particular quality is concerned, con-
may be frightfully ugly, which represents with fidelity some
base circumstance of daily life ; and a painted window may be
exquisitely beautiful, which represents men with eagles’ faces,
and dogs with blue heads and crimson tails (though, by the
way, this is not in the strict sense arr, as we shall see
hereafter, inasmuch as it means ^j,o assertion that men ever had
eagles’ faces). If this were not so, it would be impossible to
sacrifice truth to beauty ; for to at^jain the one would always
be to attain the other. But, unfortunately, this sacrifice is
exceedingly possible, and it is chiefly this which characterizes
the false schools of high art, so far as high art consists in the
pursuit of beauty. For although truth and beauty are inde-
pendent of each other, it does not follow that we are at liberty
to pursue whichever we please. They are indeed separable,
but it is wrong to separate them ; they are to be sought
together in the order of their worthiness ; that is to say, truth
first, and beauty afterwards. High art differs from low art in
possessing an excess of beauty in addition to its truth, not in
possessing excess of beauty inconsistent with truth.
CHAP.m] GREATNESS OF STYLE 87
sists in the sacrifice 6f truth to beauty. Great ^
dwells on all that is beautiful; but false art omits
or changes all that is Ugly. Great art accepts Nature
as she is, but directs the eyes and thoughts to what
is most perfect in her; false art saves itself the
trouble of direction by removing' or altering what-
ever it thinks objectionable. The evil results of
which proceeding are twofold.
§ 14. First : That beauty deprived of its proper
foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty,
just as light deprived of all shadow ceases to be
enjoyed as light. A white canvass cannot produce
an effect of sunshine; the painter must darken it in
some places before he can make it look luminous
in others; nor can an uninterrupted succession of
beauty produce the true effect of beauty; it must be
foiled by inferiority before its own power can be
developed. Nature has for the most part mingled
her inferior and nobler elements as she mingles
sunshfne with shade, giving due use and influence
to both, and the painter who chooses to remove the
shadow, perishes in the burning desert he has created.
The truly high and beautiful art of Angelico is
continually refreshed and strengthened by his frank
portraiture of the most ordinary features of his
brother monks, and of the recorded peculiarities of
ungainly sanctity; but the modern German and
Raphaelesque schools lose all honour and nobleness
in barber-like admiration of handsome faces, and
have, in fact, no real Mth except in ^straight noses,
and curled hair. Paul Veronese opposes the dwarf
to the soldier, and the negress to the queen; Shaks-
peare places Caliban beside Miranda, and Autolycus
beside Perdita; but the vulgar idealist withdraws
his beauty to the safety of the saloon, and his inno-
cence to the seclusion of the cloister; he pretends
that he does this in delicacy of choice and purity of
sentiment, while in truth he has neither courage to
front the monster, not wit enough to furnish the
knave.
§ 15. It is only by the habit of representing fa.^h-
fis THE BEAL NATURE OF [part I'Vl
fully all things, that we can truly learn what is
beautiful, and what is not. The ugliest objects con-
tain some element of beauty; and in all, it is an
element peculiar to themselves, which cannot be
separated from their ugliness, but must either be
enjoyed together with it, or not at all. The more a
painter accepts nature as he finds it, the more un-
expected beauty he discovers in what he at first
despised; but once let him arrogate the right of
rejection, and he will gradually contract his circle
of enjoyment, until what he supposed to be noble-
ness of selection ends in narrowness of perception.
Dwelling perpetually upon one class of ideas, his art
becomes at once monstrous and morbid; until at
last he cannot faithfully represent even what he
chooses to retain; his discrimination contracts into
darkness, and his fastidiousness fades into fatuity.
High art, therefore, consists neither in altering,
nor in improving nature; but in seeking throughout
nature for ‘ whatsoever tnings are lovely, and" what-
soever things are pure ’; in loving these, in display-
ing to the utmost of the painter’s power such love-
liness as is in them, and directing the thoughts of
others to them by winning art, or gentle emphasis.
Of the degree in which this can be done, and in which
. it may be permitted to gather together, without
falsifying, the finest forms or thoughts, so as to
create a sort of perfect vision, we shall have to
speak hereafter : at present, it is enough to remem-
ber that art (^ceteris paribvXi) is great in exact pro-
portion to the love of beauty -^hown by the painter,
provided that love of beauty forfeit no atom of truth.
§ 16 . HI. Sincerity. The next ^ characteristic of
great art is that it includes the largest possible
quantity of Truth in the most perfect possible har-
mony. If it were possible for art to give all the
truths of nature, it ought to do it. But this is not
possible. Choice must always be rnade of some
facts which can be represented, from among others
1 I name them in order of increasing, not decreasing import-
anfe.
CHAP.m] GREATNESS OF STYLE 89
which must be passed by in silence, or even, in some
respects, misrepresented. The inferior artist chooses
unimportant and scattered truths; the great artist
chooses the most necessary first, and afterwards the
most consistent with these, so as to obtain the
greatest possible and most harmonious sum. For
instance, Rembrandt always chooses to represent the
exact force with which the light on the most illumined
part of an object is opposed to its obscurer por-
tions. In order to obtain this, in most oases, not
very important truth, he sacrifices the light and
colour of five-sixths of his picture; and the expres-
sion of every character of objects which depends on
tenderness of shape or tint. But he obtains his
single truth, and what picturesque and forcible
expression is dependent upon it, with magnificent
skill and subtlety. Veronese, on the contrary,
chooses to represent the great relations of visible
things to each other, to the heaven above, and to
the earth beneath them. He holds it more import-
ant to show how a figure stands relieved from delicate
air, or marble wall; how as a red, or purple, or
white figure, it separates itself, in clear discernibility,
from things not red, nor purple, nor white; how
infinite daylight shines round it; how innumerable
veils of faint shadow invest it; how its blackness
and darkness are, in the excess of their nature,
just as limited and local as its intensity of light :
all this, I say, he feels to be more important than
showing merely the e^jact measwre of the spark of
sunshine that gleams on a dagger-hMt, or glows on
a jewel. All this, moreover, he feels to be harmoni-
ous — capable of being joined in one great system of
spacious truth. And with inevitable watcnfulness,
inestimable subtlety, he unites all this in tenderest
balance, noting in each hair’s-breadth of colour, not
merely what its rightness or wrongness is in itself,
but wnat its relation is to every other on his canvass ;
restraining, for truth’s sake, his exhaustless energy,
reining back, for truth’s sake, his fiery strength;
veiling, before truth, the vanity of brightness; pene-
40 THE BEAL NATURE OF [part iv.
tratiug, for truth, the discouragement of gloom;
ruling his restless invention with a rod of iron;
pardoning no error, no thoughtlessness, no forgetful-
ness; and subduing all his powers, impulses, and
imagin&tions, to the arbitrement of a merciless
justice, and the obedience of an incorruptible verity.
J give this instance with respect to colour and
shade; but, in the whole field of art, the difference
between the great and inferior artists is of the same
kind, and may be determined at once by the question,
which of them conveys the largest sum of truth?
§ 17. It follows from this principle, that in general
all great drawing is distinct drawing; for truths
which are rendered indistinctly might, for the most
part, as well not be rendered at all. There are, in-
deed, certain facts of mystery, and facts of indis-
tinctness, in all objects, which must have their
proper place in the general harmony, and the reader
will presently find me, when we come to that part
of our investigation, telling him that all good tdr aw-
ing must in some sort be wdistinct. We may,
however, understand this apparent contradiction, by
reflecting that the highest knowledge always involves
a more advanced perception of the fields of the
unknown; and, therefore, it may most truly be said,
that to know anything well involves a profound sen-
sation of ignorance, while yet it is equally true that
good and noble knowledge is distinguished from vain
and useless knowledge chiefly by its clearness and
distinctness, and by the vigorous consciousness of
what is known and what is not.
So in art. The best drawing involves a wonderful
perception and expression of indistinctness; and yet
all noble drawing is separated from the ignoble by
its distinctness, by its fine expression and firm
assertion of Something; whereas the bad drawing,
without either firmness or fineness, expresses and
asserts Nothing. The first thing, therefore, to be
looked for as a sign of noble art, is a clear con-
sciousness of what is drawn and what is not; the
bold statement, and frank confession — ‘ This I
41
CHAP. Ill] GREATNESS .OF STILE
know *, ‘ that I know not and, generally speaking,
all haste, slurring, obscurity, indecision, are signs
of low art, and afl calmness, distinctness, luminous-
ness, and positiveness, of high art.
§ 18. It follows, secondly, from this principle, that
as the great painter is always attending to tke sum
and harmony of his truths rather than to one or the
other of any group, a quality of Grasp is visible in
his work, like the power of a great reasoner over
his subject, or a great poet over his conception,
manifesting itself very often in missing out certain
details or less truths (which, though good in them-
selves, he finds are in the way of others), and in
a sweeping manner of getting the beginnings and
ends of things shown at once, and the squares and
depths rather than the surfaces : hence, on the
whole, a habit of looking at large masses rather than
small ones; and even a physical largeness of hand-
ling, and love of working, if possible, on a large
scale; %nd various other qualities, more or less
imperfectly expressed by such technical terms as
breadth, massing, unity, boldness, &c., all of which
are, indeed, great qualities when they mean breadth
of truth, weight of truth, unity of truth, and courage-
ous assertion of truth; but which have all their
correlative errors and mockeries, almost universally
mistaken for them — ^the breadth which has no con-
tents, the weight which has no value, the unity
which plots deception, and the boldness which faces
out fallacy. §
§ 10. And it is to be noted especially respecting
largeness of scale, that though for the most part it
is characteristic of the more powerful masters, they
having both more invention wherewith to fill space
(as Ghirlandajo wished that he might paint all the
walls of Florence), and, often, an impetuosity of
mind which makes them like free play for hand
and arm (besides that they usually desire to paint
everything in the foreground of their picture of the
natural size), yet, as this largeness of scale involves
the placing of the picture at a considerable distance
42 THE REAL NATURE OF [part iv:
from the eye, and this distance involves the loss of
many delicate details, and especially of the subtle
lines of expression in features, it follows that the
masters of refined detail and human expression are
apt to prefer a small scale to work upon; so that
the chief masterpieces of expression which the world
possesses are small pictures by Angelico, in which
the figures are rarely more than six or seven inches
high; in the best works of Raphael and Leonardo the
figures are almost always less than life, and the best
works of Turner do not exceed the size of 18 inches
by 12.
§ 20. As its greatness depends on the sum of truth,
and this sum of truth can always be increased by
delicacy of handling, it follpws that all great art
must have this delicacy to the utmost possible degree.
This rule is infallible and inflexible. All coarse work
is the sign of low art. Only, it is to be remembered,
that coarseness must be estimated by the distance
from the eye; it being necessary to consult this
distance, when great, by laying on touches which
appear coarse when seen near; but which, so far
from being coarse, are, in reality, more delicate in a
master’s work than the finest close handling, for
they involve a calculation of result, and are laid
on with a subtlety of sense precisely correspondent
to that with which a good archer draws his bow; the
spectator seeing in the action nothing but the strain
of the strong arm, while there is, in reality, in the
finger and eye, an ineffably delicate estimate of
distance, and touch on the arrow plume. And, in-
deed, this delicacy is generally quite perceptible to
those who know what the truth is, for strokes by
Tintoret or Paul Veronese, which were done in an
instant, and look to an ignorant spectator merely
like a violent dash of loaded colour, (and are, as
such, imitated by blundering artists), are, in fact,
modulated by the brush and finger to that degree of
delicacy that no single grain of the colour could be
taken from the touch without injury; and little
golden particles of it, not the size of a gnat’s head.
43
CHAP. Ill] GREATNESS OF STILE
have important share and function in the balances
of light in a picture perhaps fifty feet long. Nearly
every other rule applicable to art has soAie exception
but this. This has absolutely none. All great art
is delicate art, and all coarse art is bad art. Nay,
even to a certain extent, all hold art is bad art;
for boldness is not the proper word to apply to the
courage and swiftness of a great master, based on
knowledge, and coupled with fear and love. There
is as much difference between the boldness of the
true and the false masters, as there is between the
courage of a pure woman and the shamelessness of
a lost one.
§ 21. IV. Invention. The last characteristic of
great art is that it must be inventive, that is, be
produced by the imagination. In this respect, it
must precisely fulfil the definition already given of
poetry; and not only present grounds for noble
emotion, but furnish these grounds by imaginative
power, • Hence there is at once a great bar fixed
between the two schools of Lower and Higher Art.
The lower merely copies what is set before it,
whether in portrait, landscape, or still-life; the
higher either entirely imagines its subject, or arranges
the materials presented to it, so as to manifest the
imaginative power in all the three phases which have
been already explained in the second volume.
And this was the truth which was confusedly
present in Reynolds's mind when he spoke, as above
quoted, of the difference between Historical and
Poetical Painting. Every relation of tfie plain facts
tvhich the painter saw is proper historical painting i.
If those facts are unimportant (as that he saw a
gambler quarrel with another gambler, or a sot
enjoying himself with another sot), then the history
is trivial; if the facts are important (as that he
saw such and such a great man look thus, or act
thus, at such a time), then the history is noble :
in each case perfect truth of narrative being sup-
posed, otherwise the whole thing is worthless, being
^ Compare my Edinburgh Lectures, lecture ir.
44 THE KEAL NATURE OF [part iv.
Hither kistory nor poetry, but plain falsehood. And
farther, as greater or less elegance and precision are
manifested in the relation or painting of the incidents,
the merit of the work varies; so that, what with
difference of subject, and what with difference of
treatment, historical painting falls or rises in change-
ful eminence, from Dutch trivialities to a Velasquez
|)ortrait, just as historical talking or writing varies
in eminence, from an old woman’s story-telling up
to Herodotus. Besides which, certain operations of
the imagination come into play inevitably, here and
there, so as to touch the history with some light
of poetry, that is, with some light shot forth of the
narrator’s mind, or brought out by the way he has
put the accidents together : and wherever the
imagination has thus had anything to do with the
matter at all (and it must be somewhat cold work
where it has not), then, the confines of the lower
and higher schools touching each other, the work is
oolourM by both; but there is no reason wh^, there-
fore, we should in the least confuse the historical
and poetical characters, any more than that we
should confuse blue with crimson, because they may
overlap each other, and produce purple.
§ 22. Now, historical or simply narrative art is
very precious in its proper place and way, but it is
never great art until the poetical or imaginative
power touches it; and in proportion to the stronger
manifestation of this power, it becomes greater and
greater, while the highest %irt is purely imaginative,
all its materials being wrought into their form by
invention; and it differs, the^refore, from the simple
historical painting, exactly as Wordsworth’s stanza,
above quoted, differs from Saussure’s plain narrative
of the parallel fact; and the imaginative painter
differs from the historical painter in the manner
that Wordsworth differs from Saussure.
§ 23. Farther, imaginative art always includes
historical art; so that, strictly speaking, according
to the analogy above used, we meet with the pure
blue, and with the crimson ruling the blue and
CHAP.ni] G-REAINjESS OF 8TY.LE. 4|
changing it into kingly purple, but not with the pure
crimson : for all imagination must deal with the
knowledge it has before accumulated; it never pro-
duces anything but by combination or contempla-
tion. Creation, in the full sense, is impossible to
it. And the mode in which the historical faculties
are included by it is often quite simple, and easily,
seen. Thus, in Hunt’s great poetical picture of the
Light of the World, the whole thought and arrange-
ment of the picture being imaginative, the several
details of it are wrought out with simple portraiture ;
the ivy, the jewels, the creeping plants, and the
moonlight being calmly studied or remembered from
the things themselves. But of all these special ways-
in which the invention works with plain facts, we
shall have to treat farther afterwards.
§ 24. And now, finally, since this poetical power
includes the historical, if we glance back to the
other qualities required in great art, and put all
together, we find that the sum of them is simply
the sum of ^11 the powers of man. For as (1) the
choice of the high subject involves all conditions of
right moral choice, and as (2) the love of beauty
involves all conditions of right admiration, and as
(3) the grasp of truth involves all strength of sense,
evenness of judgment, and honesty of purpose, and
as (4) the poetical power involves all swiftness ol
invention, and accuracy of historical memory, the
sum of all thesie powers is the sum of the human
soul. Hence we see why^ the word ‘ Great ’ is used
of this art. It is literally great. It compasses and.
calls forth the entire human spirit, whereas any
other kind of art, being more or less small or
harrow, compasses and calls forth only part of the*
human spirit. Hence the idea of its magnitude is a
literal and just one, the art being simply less or
greater in proportion to the number of faculties it,
exercises and addresses i. And this is the ultimate
meaning of the definition I gave of it long ago, as con-
taining the ‘ greatest number of the greatest ideas. ^
1 Compare Stones of Venice^ vol. iii, chap, iv, § 7 and § 21.
, 46 THE KEAE NATURE OF [pabt iv.
§ 25. Such, then, being the characters required
in order to constitute high art, if the reader will
think over them a little, and over the various ways
in which they may be falsely assumed, he will easily
perceive how spacious and dangerous a field of dis-
cussion they open to the ambitious critic, and of
eyror to the ambitious artist ; he will see how difficult
it must be, either to distinguish what is truly great
art from the mockeries of it, or to rank the real
artists in any thing like a progressive system of
greater and less. For it will have been observed that
the various qualities which form greatness are partly
inconsistent with each other (as some virtues are,
docility and firmness for instance), and partly inde-
pendent of each other; and the fact is, that artists
differ not more by mere capacity, than by the com-
ponent elements of their capacity, each possessing in
very different proportions the several attributes of
greatness; so that, classed by one kind of merit, as,
for instance, purity of expression, Angelico will stand
highest; classed by another, sincerity of manner,
Veronese will stand highest; classed by another, love
of beauty, Leonardo will stand highest; and so on :
hence arise continual disputes and misunderstandings
among those who think that high art must always
be one and the same, and that great artists ought
to unite all great attributes in an equal degree.
§ 26. In one of the exquisitely finished tales of
Marmontel, a company of critics are received at
dinner by the hero of the<,story, an old gentleman,
somewhat vE^in of his acquired taste, and his niece,
by whose incorrigible natural taste, he is seriously
disturbed and tormented. During the entertainment,
‘ On parcourut tous les genres de litt^rature, et pour
donner plus d’essor k I’irudition et k la critique, on
mit Bur le tapis cette question toute neuve, SQavoir,
lequel m^ritoit la pr^f^rence de Corneille ou de Racine.
L’on disoit meme Ik-dessus les plus belles choses du
monde, lorsque la petite nikce, qui n’avoit pas dit un
mot, s’avisa de demander naivement lequel des deux
fruits, de I’orange ou de la peche, avoit le gofit le plus
CHAP, in] GKEATNESS OF STYLE 47
cxquis et m^ritoit le plus d’^loges. Son oncle rougit
de sa simplicity, et les convives baisserent tous les
yeux sans daigner rypondre k cette b^tise. Ma ni^ce,
dit Fintac, k votre age, il faut SQavoir ycouter, et se
taire.’
I cannot close this chapter with shorter or better
advice to the reader, than merely, whenever he hears
discussions about the relative merits of great masters,
to remember the young lady’s question. It is, in-
deed, true that there is a relative merit, that a peach
is nobler than a hawthorn berry, and still more a
hawthorn berry than a bead of the nightshade; but
in each rank of fruits, as in each rank of masters,
one is endowed with one virtue, and another with
another; their glory is their dissimilarity, and they
who propose to themselves in the training of an artist
that he should unite the colouring of Tintoret, the
finish of Albert Diirer, and the tenderness of Cor-
reggio, are no wiser than a horticulturist would be,
who made it the object of his labour to produce a
fruit which should unite in itself the lusciousness of
the grape, the crispness of the nut, and the fragrance
of the pine.,
§ 27. And from these considerations one most
important practical corollary is to be deduced, with
the good help of Mademoiselle Agathe’s simile,
namely, that the greatness or smallness of a man
is, in the most conclusive sense, determined for him
at his birth, as strictly as it is determined for a
fruit whether it is to be* a currant or an apricot.
Education, favourable circumstances, reiffolution, and
industry can do much; in a certain sense they do
every thing; that is to say, they determine whether
the poor apricot shall fall in the form of a green
bead, blighted by the east wind, and be trodden
under foot, or whether it shall expand into tender
pride, and sweet brightness of golden velvet. But
apricot out of currant — great man oilt of small—
did never yet art or effort make; and, in a general
way, men have their excellence nearly fixed tor
them when they are born; a little cramped and
OF THE FAliSE IDEAL [part iv>
'■fi^ost-bitten on one side, a little sun-bumt and for-'
tune-spotted on the other, they reach, between good
and evil chances, such size and taste as generally
belong to the men of their calibre, and, the small
in their serviceable bunches, the great in their
golden isolation, have, these no cause for regret, nor
those for disdain.
§ 28. Therefore it is, that every system of teach-
ing is false which holds forth ‘ great art ’ as in any
wise to be taught to students, or even to be aimed
at by them. Great art is precisely that which never
was, nor will be taught, it is pre-eminently and finally
the expression of the spirits of great men; so that
the only wholesome teaching is that which simply
endeavours to fix those characters of nobleness in
the pupil’s mind, of which it seems easily suscept-
ible; • and without holding out to him, as a possible
or even probable result, that he should ever paint
like Titian, or carve like Michael Angelo, enforces
upon him the manifest possibility, and assured duty,
of endeavouring to draw in a manner at least honest
and intelligible; and cultivates in him those general
charities of heart, sincerities of thought, and graces
of habit which are likely to lead him, throughout
life, to prefer openness to affectation, realities to
shadows, and beauty to corruption.
CHAPTER IV
OF Trik FALSE IDEAL *, FIRST, RELIGIOUS
§ 1. Having now gained some general notion of
the meaning of ‘ great art ’, we may, without risk
of confusing ourselves, take up thei questions sug-J
gested, incidentally in the preceding chapter, and
pursue them at leisure. Of these, two principal
ones are closely connected with each other, to wit,
that put in the 12th paragraph — How may beauty
be sought in defiance of truth? and that in the
28rd paragraph — How does the imagination show;
I. REUGIOUS
CHAP. IV]
itself in dealing with truth? These two,
which are, besides, the most important of allTanu?
if well answered, will answer many others inclusively,
we shall find it most convenient to deal with at
once.
§ 2. The pursuit, by the imagination, of beautiful
and strange thoughts or subjects, to the exclusiqii; of
painful or common ones, is called among us, in tftlie
modern days, the pursuit of ‘ the ideal not d^es
any subject deserve more attentive examination than
the manner in which this pursuit is entered upon by
the modem mind. The reader must pardon me for
making in the outset one or two statements which
may appear to him somewhat wide of the matter,
but which, (if he admits their truth), he ■will, I
think, presently perceive to reach to the root of it.
Namely,
That men’s proper business in this world falls
mainly into three divisions :
First, to know themselves, and the existing state
of the things they have to do with.
Secondly, to be happy in themselves, and in the
existing state of things.
Thirdly, to mend themselves, and the existing state
of things, as far as either are marred and mendable.
These, I say, are the three plain divisions of
proper human business on this earth. For these
three, the following are usually substituted and
adopted by human creatures :
First, to be totally igncj^ant of themselves, and the
existing state of things. •
Secondly, to be miserable in themselves, and in
the existing state of things.
Thirdly, to let themselves, and the existing state
of things, alone (at least, in the way of correction).
§ 3. The dispositions which induce us to manage,
thus wisely, the affairs of this life seem to be :
First, a fear of disagreeable facts, and conscious
shrinking from clearness of light, which keep us
from examining ourselves, and increase gradually
into a species of instinctive terror at all truth, and
M. P.,111. E •
OF THE FALSE IDEAL [part iv
love of glosses, veils, and decorative lies of every
sort,
Secondly, a general readiness to take delight in
anything past, future, far off, or somewhere else,
rather than in things now, near, and here; leading
us gradually to place our pleasure principally in
the exercise of the imagination, and to build all our
Satisfaction on things as they are not. Which power
being one not accorded to the lower animals, and
having indeed, when disciplined, a very noble use,
we pride ourselves upon it, whether disciplined or
not, and pass our lives complacently, in substantial
discontent, and visionary satisfaction.
§ 4. Now nearly all artistical and poetical seeking
after the ideal is only one branch of this base habit
^the abuse of the imagination, in allowing it to
find its whole delight in the impossible and untrue;
while the faithful pursuit of the ideal is an honest
use of the imagination, giving full power and
presence to the possible and true.
It is the difference between these two uses of it
which we have to examine.
§ 6. And, first, consider what are the legitimate
uses of the imagination, that is to say, of the power
of perceiving, or conceiving with the mind, things
which cannot be perceived by the senses.
Its first and noblest use is, to enable us to bring
sensibly to our sight the things which are recorded
as belonging to our future state, or as invisibly
surrounding us in this. It is given us, that we may
imagine the <cloud of witnesses in heaven and earth,
and see, as if they were n^w present, the souls of
the righteous waiting for us; that we may conceive
the great army of the inhabitants of heaven, and
discover among them those whom we most desire
to be with for ever; that we may be able to vision
forth the ministry of angels beside us, and see the
chariots of fire on the mountains that gird us round;
but, above all, to call up the scenes and facts in
which we are commanded to believe, and be present,
as if in the body, at every recorded event of the
I. BELIGIOUS
CHAP. IV]
51
history of the Redeemed. Its second and ordinary
use is to empower us to traverse the scenes of all
other history, and force the facts to become again
visible, so as to make upon us the same impression
which they would have made if we had witnessed
them : and in the minor necessities of life, to enable
us, out of any present good, to gather the utmost
measure of enjoyment by investing it with happy
associations, and, in any present evil, to lighten it,
by summoning back the images of other hours; and,
also, to give to all mental truths some visible type
in allegory, simile, or personification, which shall
more deeply enforce them; and, finally, when the
mind is utterly outwearied, to refresh it with such
innocent play as shall be most in harmony with
the suggestive voices of natural things, permitting it
to possess living companionship instead of silent
beauty, and create for itself fairies in the grass, and
naiads in the wave,
§ 6., These being the uses of imagination, its
abuses are either in creating, for mere pleasure, false
images, where it is its duty to create true ones;
or in turning what was intended for the mere refresh-
ment of the heart into its daily food, and changing
the innocent pastime of an hour into the guilty
occupation of a life.
Let us examine the principal forms of this misuse,
one by one.
§ 7. First, then, the imagination is chiefly warped
and dishonoured by bei:i|g allowed to create false
images, where it is its duty to create trufe ones. And
this most dangerously in matters of religion. For
a long time, when art was in its infancy, it remained
unexposed to this danger, because it could not, with
any power, realize or create any thing. It consisted
merely in simple outlines and pleasant colours ;
which were understood to be nothing more than
signs of the thing thought of, a sort of pictorial
letter for it, no more pretending to represent it than
the written characters of its name. Such art excited
the imagination, while it pleased the eye. But it
OF THE FALSE IDEAL [part iv
aasertBd nothing, for it could realize nothing. The
reader glanced at it as a glittering symbol, and went
on to form truer images for himself. This act of
the mind may be still seen in daily operation in
children, as they look at brightly coloured pictures
in their story-books. Such pictures neither deceive
them nor satisfy them; they only set their own
inventive powers to work in the directions required.
§ 8. But as soon as art obtained the power of
realization, it obtained also that of assertion. As
fast as the painter advanced in skill he gained also
in credibility, and that which he perfectly repre-
sented was perfectly believed, or could be disbelieved
qnly l^y an actual effort of the beholder to escape
from the fascinating deception. What had been
faintly declared, might be painlessly denied; but it
was difficult to discredit things forcibly alleged; and
representations, which had been innocent in dis-
crepancy, became guilty in consistency.
§ 9. For instance, when in the thirteenth Qentury,
the Nativity was habitually represented by such a
symbol as in fig. 1, Plate A, there was not the
smallest possibility that such a picture could dis-
turb, in the mind of the reader of the New Testa-
ment, the simple meaning of the w’ords ‘ wrapped
Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger.’
That this manger was typified by a trefoiled arch ^
would no more prevent his distinct understanding
of the narrative, than the grotesque heads intro-
duced above it would interfere with his firm com-
prehension di the words ‘ ox ’ or ‘ ass ’ ; while if
there were anything in the action of the principal
figures suggestive of real feeling, that suggestion
he would accept, together with the general pleasant-
ness of the lines and colours in the decorative letter;
J The curious inequality of the little trefoil is not a mistake ;
it is faithfully copied by the draughtsman from the MS. Per-
hap • the actual date of the illumination may be a year or two
past the thirteenth century, i.e. 1300— -1310 ; but it is quite
characteristic of the thirteenth century treatment in the
figures.
//Al
I’i-Ali. A
iyh( c />.
CHAP. IV] I. BELIGIOUS 58
but T^thout having his faith in the unrepresented
and actual scene obscured for a moment. But it
was far otherwise, when Francia or Perugino, with
exquisite power of representing the human form,
and high knowledge of the mysteries of art, devoted
all their skill to the delineation of an impossible
scene; and painted, for their subjects of the
Nativity, a beautiful and queenly lady, her dress
embroidered with gold, and with a crown of jewels
upon her hair, kneeling, on a floor of inlaid and
precious marble, before a crowned child, laid under
a portico of Lombardic i architecture; with a sweet,
verdurous, and vivid landscape in the distance, full
of winding rivers, village spires, and baronial
towers 2. It is quite true that the frank absurdity
of the thought prevented its being received as a
deliberate contradiction of the truths of Scripture;
but it is no less certain, that the continual present-
ment to the mind of this beautiful and fully realized
imager^ more and more chilled its power of appre-
hending the real truth; and that when pictures of
this description met the eye in every corner of every
chapel, it was physically impossible to dwell dis-
tinctly upon facts the direct reverse of those repre-
sented. The word ‘ Virgin ’ or ‘ Madonna instead
of calling up the vision of a simple Jewish girl, bear-
ing the calamities of poverty, and the dishonours of
inferior station, summoned instantly the idea of a
graceful princess, crowned with gems, and sur-
rounded by obsequious lilinistry of kings and saints.
The fallacy which was presented to the imagination
was indeed discredited, but also the fact which was
not presented to the imagination was forgotten; all
true grounds of faith were gradually undermined,
and the beholder was either enticed into mere luxury
of fanciful enjoyment, believing nothing; or left, in
1 Lombardic, i.e. in the style of Pietro and Tullio Lombardo,
in the fifteenth century (not Lombard),
All this, it will be observed, is that seeking for beauty at
the cost of truth which we have generally noted in the last
chapter, f
64 OF THE FALSE IDEAL [part iv
his confusion of mind, the prey of vain tales and
traditions; while in his best feelings he was uncon-
Bciously subject to the power of the fallacious pic-
ture, and, with no sense of the real cause of his
error, bowed himself, in prayer or adoration, to the
lovely lady on her golden throne, when he would
never have dreamed of doing so to the Jewish girl
in her outcast poverty, or, in her simple household,
to the carpenter’s wife.
§ 10. But a shadow of increasing darkness fell upon
the human mind as art proceeded to still more per-
fect realization. These fantasies of the earlier
painters, though they darkened faith, never hardened
feeling; on the contrary, the frankness of their un-
likelihood proceeded mainly from the endeavour on
the part of the painter to express, not the actual
fact, but the enthusiastic state of his own feelings
about the fact; he covers the Virgin’s dress with
gold, not with any idea of representing the Virgin
as she ever was, or ever will be seen, but* with a
burning desire to show what his love and reverence
would think fittest for her. He erects for the stable
a Lombardic portico, not because he supposes the
Lombardi to have built stables in Palestine in the
days of Tiberius, but to show that the manger in
which Christ was laid is, in his eyes, nobler than
the greatest architecture in the world. He fills his
landscape with church spires and silver streams,
not because he supposes that either were in sight
at Bethieher^, but to renfind the beholder of the
peaceful course and succeeding power of Christianity.
And, regarded with due sympathy and clear under-
standing of these thoughts of the artist, such pictures
remain most impressive and touching, even to this
day* I shall refer to them in future, in general
terms, as' the pictures of the ‘ Angelican Ideal
Angelico being the central master of the school.
§ 11. It was far otherwise in the next step of the
Realistic progress. The greater his powers became,
the^ more the mind of the painter was absorbed in
their attainment, and complacent in their display*
I. RELIGIOUS
55
CHAP. IV]
The early arts of laying on bright colours smoothly,
of burnishing golden ornaments, or tracing, leaf by
leaf, the outlines of flowers, were not so difficult
as that they should materially occupy the thoughts
of the artist, or furnish foundation for nis conceit; he
learned these rudiments of his work without pain,
and employed them without pride, his spirit being
left free to express, so far as it was capable of them,
the reaches of higher thought. But when accurate
shade, and subtle colour, and perfect anatomy, and
complicated perspective, became necessary to the
work, the artist’s whole energy was employed in
learning the laws of these, and his whole pleasure
consisted in exhibiting them. His life was devoted,
not to the objects of art, but to the cunning of it;
and the sciences of composition and light and shade
were pursued as if there were abstract good in them ;
as if, like astronomy or mathematics, they were ends
in themselves, irrespective of anything to be effected
by the!n. And without perception, on the part of
any one, of the abyss to which all were hastening,
a fatal change of aim took place throughout the
whole world of art. In early times art was employed
for the display of religious facts; now, religious facts
ivere employed for the display of art. The transi-
tion, though imperceptible, was consummate; it
involved the entire destiny of painting. It was
passing from the paths of life to the paths of
§ 12. And this change* was all the rgore fatal, be-
cause at first veiled by an appearance of greater
dignity and sincerity than were possessed by the
older art. One of the earliest results of the new
knowledge was the putting away the greater part
of the unlikelihoods and fineries of the ancient
pictures, and an apparently closer following of nature
and probability. All the fantasy which I have just
been blaming as disturbant of the simplicity of faith,
was first subdued — ^then despised and cast aside.
The appearances of nature were more closely followed
in everything; and the crowned Queen-Virgin j>i
66 OF THE FALSE IDEAL [paet iv
Perugino sank into a simple Italian mother in
Raphaers Madonna of the Chair.
§ 13. Was not this, then, a healthy change? No.
It would have been healthy if it had been effected
with a pure motive, and the new truths would have
been precious if they had been sought for truth’s
sake. But they were not sought for truth’s sake,
but for pride ’s ; and truth which is sought for display
may be just as harmful as truth which is spoken in
malice. The glittering childishness of the old art
was rejected, not because it was false, but because
it was easy; and, still more, because the painter
had no longer any religious passion to express. He
could think of the Madonna now very calmly, with
no desire to pour out the treasures of earth at her
feet, or crown her brows with the golden shafts of
heaven. He could think of her as an available sub-
ject for the display of transparent shadows, skilful
tints, and scientific foreshortenings — as a fair
woman, forming, if well painted, a pleasant piece
of furniture for the corner of a boudoir, and best
imagined by combination of the beauties of the
prettiest contadinas. He could think of her, in her
last maternal agony, with academical discrimination;
sketch in first her skeleton, invest her, in serene
science, with the muscles of misery and the fibres
of sorrow; then cast the grace of antique drapery
over the nakedness of her desolation, and fulfil, with
studious lustre of tears and delicately painted pallor,
the perfect type of the ‘ Mater Dolorosa ’.
§ 14. It was thus that Raphael thought of the
Madonna i.
Now observe, when the subject was thus scientific-
ally completed, it became necessary, as we have just
said, to the full display of all the power of the artist,
that it should in many respects be more faithfully
imagined^ than it had been hitherto. ‘ Keeping ’,
‘ Expression * Historical Unity ’, and such other
1 This is one form of the sacrifice of expression to technical
noted at the end of the 10th paragraph of the
I. RELIGIOUS
57
CHAP. IV]
requirements, were enforoed on the painter, in the
same tone, and with the same purpose, as the purity
of his oil and the accuracy of his perspective. He
was told that the figure of Christ should be ‘ digni-
fied those of the Apostles ‘ expressive \ that of the
Virgin * modest ’, and those of children ‘ innocent
All this was perfectly true ; and in obedience to such
directions, the painter proceeded to manufacture
certain arrangements of apostolic sublimity, virginal
mildness, and infantine innocence, which, being free
from the quaint imperfection and contradictoriness
of the early art, were looked upon by the European
public as true things, and trustworthy represent-
ations of the events of religious history. The pictures
of Francia and Bellini had been received as pleasant
visions. But the cartoons of Raphael were received
as representations of historical fact.
§ 15. Now, neither they, nor any other work of
the pejiod, were representations either of historical
or of possible fact. They were, in the strictest sense
of the word, ‘ compositions ’ — cold arrangements of
propriety and agreeableness, according to academical
formulas; the -painter never in any case making the
slightest effort to conceive the thing as it really
must have happened, but only to gather together
graceful lines and beautiful faces, in such compliance
with commonplace ideas of the subject as might ob-
tain for the whole an * epic unity or some such
other form of scholastic j)erfectness.
§ 16, Take a very important instancy.
I suppose there is no event in the whole life of
Christ to which, in hours of doubt or fear, men turn
with more anxious thirst to know the close facts of
it, or with more earnest and passionate dwelling
upon every syllable of its recorded narrative, than
Christ’s showing Himself -to His disciples at the lake
of Galilee. There is something pre-eminently open,
natural, full fronting our disbelief in this manifest-
ation. The others, recorded after the resurrection,
were sudden, phantom-like, occurring to men in pro-
found sorrow and wearied agitation of heart ; ; n^t.
58 OF THE FALSE IDEAL [part iv
it might seem, safe judges of what they saw. But
the agitation was now over. They had gone back
to their daily work, thinking still their business lay
net-wards, unmeshed from the literal rope and drag.
‘ Simon Peter saith unto them, “I go a fishing
Th,ey say unto him, “We also go with thee’’.’
True words enough, and having far echo beyond those
Galilean hills. That night they caught nothing; but
when the morning came, in the clear light of it, be-
hold, a figure stood on the shore. They were not
thinking of anything but their fruitless hauls. They
had no guess who it was. It asked them simply if
they had caught anything. They said no. And
it tells them to cast yet again. And John shades
his eyes from the morning sun with his hand, to look
who it is; and though the glinting of the sea, too,
dazzles him, he makes out who it is, at last; and
poor Simon, not to be outrun this time, tightens
his fisher’s coat about him, and dashes in, over the
nets. One would have liked to see him swim those
hundred yards, and stagger to his knees on the
beach.
Well, the others get to the beach, too, in time,
in such slow way as men in general do get, in this
World, to its true shore, much impeded by that
wonderful ‘ dragging the net with fishes ’; but they
get there — seven of them in all; — first the Denier,
and then the slowest believer, and then the quickeslj
believer, and then the twcj. throne-seekers, and two
more, we knpw not who.
They sit down on the shoriJ face to face with Him,
and eat their broiled fish as He bids. And then, to
Peter, all dripping still, shivering, and amazed,
staring at Christ in the sun, on the other side of the
coal fire — thinking a little perhaps, of what hap-
pened by another coal fire, when it was colder, and
having had no word once changed with him by his
Master since that look of His — to him, so amazed,
comes the question, ‘ Simon, lovest thou me?’ Try
to feel that a little, and think of it till it is true to
you; and then, take up that infinite monstrosity and
I. RELIGIOUS
59
CHAP, IV]
hypocrisy — Raphael’s cartoon of the Charge to Peter*
Note, first, the bold fallacy — ^the putting all the
Apostles there, a mere lie to serve the Papal heresy
of the Petrie supremacy, by putting them all in the
background while Peter receives the charge, and
making them all witnesses to it. Note the hand-
somely curled hair and neatly tied sandals of the
men who had been out all night in the sea-mists
and on the slimy decks. Note their convenient
dresses for going a-fishing, with trains that lie a
yard along the ground, and goodly fringes — all made
to match, an apostolic fishing costume Note how
Peter especially (whose chief glory was in his wet
coat girt about him and naked limbs) is enveloped
in folds and fringes, so as to kneel and hold his keys
with grace. No fire of coals at all, nor lonely moun-
tain shore, but a pleasant Italian landscape, full of
villas and churches, and a flock of sheep to be
pointed at; and the whole group of Apostles, not
round Christ, as they would have been naturally, but
straggling away in a line, that they may all be
shown.
The simple truth is, that the moment we look at
the picture we feel our belief of the whole thing taken
away. There is, visibly, no possibility of that group
ever having existed, in any place, or on any occasion*
It is all a mere mythic absurdity, and faded con-
coction of fringes, muscular arms, and curly heads
of Greek philosophers. ^
§ 17* Now, the evil consequences of Jhe acceptance
of this kind of religious idealism for true, were in-
stant and manifold. So far as it was received and
trusted in by thoughtful persons, it only served to
chill all the conceptions of sacred history which they
might otherwise have obtained. Whatever they could
have fancied for themselves about the wild, strange,
infinitely stern, infinitely tender, infinitely varied
veracities of the life of Christ, was blotted out by
1 I suppose Raphael intended a reference to Numbers xv,
38 ; but if he did, the blue riband, or ‘ vitta \ as it is in the
V iilgate, should have been on the larders too.
60
OF THE FALSE IDEAL [paex jv
the vapid fineries of Raphael : the rough Galilean
pilot, the orderly custom receiver, and all the ques-
tioning wonder and fire of uneducated apostleship,
were obscured under an antique mask of philoBophical
faces and long robes. The feeble, subtle, suffering,
ceaseless energy and humiliation of St Paul were
ounfused with an idea of a meditative Hercules
leaning on a sweeping sword ^ ; and the mighty pre-
sences of Moses and Elias were softened by intro--
ductions of delicate grace, adopted from dancing
nymphs and rising Auroras 3.
Now, no vigorously minded religious person could
possibly receive pleasure or help from such art as
this; and the necessary result was the instant re-
jection of it by the healthy religion of the world.
Raphael ministered, with- applause, to the impious
luxury of the Vatican, but was trampled under foot
at once by every believing and advancing Christian
of his own and subsequent times; and thencefor-
ward pure Christianity and ‘ high art ’ took ^parate
roads, and fared on, as ,b©st they might, independ-
ently of each other.
§ 18. But although Calvin, and Knox, and Luther,
and their flocks, with all the hardest-headed and
truest-hearted faithful left in Christendom, thus
Spurned away the spurious art, and all art with it,
(not without harm to themselves, such as a man
must needs sustain in cutting off a decayed limb ®,)
1 In the St Cecilia of Bologna.
2 In the Transfiguration. Do ^ut try to believe that Moses
and Elias are really there talking v^ith Christ. Moses in the
loveliest heart and midst of the land which once it had been
denied him to behold — Elijah treading the earth again, from
which he had been swept to heaven in fire ; both now with a
mightier message than ever they had given in life — mightier,
in closing their own mission — mightier, in speaking to Christ
* of His decease, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.’
They, men of like passions once with us, appointed to speak to
the Ked^eemer of His death.
And, then, look at Raphael’s kicking gracefulnesses.
3 Luther had no dislike of religious art on principle. Even
the stove in his chamber was wrought with sacred subjects.
Se^ Mrs Stowe’s Mutiny Memories,
I. RELIGIOUS
61
CHAP, iv]
certain conditions of weaker Christianity suffered
the false system to retain influence over them; and
to this day, the clear and tasteless poison of the art
of Raphael infects with sleep of infidelity the hearts
■of millions of Christians. It is the first cause of
all that pre-eminent dulness which characterizes what
Protestants call sacred art; a dulness not merely
baneful in making religion distasteful to the young,
but in sickening, as we have seen, all vital belief
of religion in the old. A dim sense of impossibility
attaches itself always to the graceful emptiness of
the representation; we feel instinctively that the
painted Christ and painted apostle are not beings
that ever did or could exist; and this fatal sense
of fair fabulousness, and well-composed impossibility,
steals gradually from the picture into the history,
until we find ourselves reading St Mark or St Luke
with the same admiring, but uninterested, incredulity,
with which we contemplate Raphael.
§ 19. On a certain class of minds, however, these
Raphadesque and other sacred paintings of high
order, have had, of late years, another kind of in-
fluence, much resembling that which they had at
first on the most pious Romanists. They are used
to excite certain conditions of religious dream or
reverie; being again, as in earliest times, regarded
not as representations of fact, but as expressions of
sentiment respecting the fact. In this way the best
of them have unquestionably much purifying and
enchanting power; and^they are helpful opponents
to sinful passion and weakness of every kind. A fit
of unjust anger, petty malice, unreasonable vexation,
or dark passion, cannot certainly, in a mind of
ordinary sensibility, hold its own in the presence of
a good engraving from any work of Angelico, Mem-
ling, or Perugino. But I nevertheless believe, that
he who trusts much to such helps will find them fail
.him at his need; and that the dependence, in any
^eat degree, on the presence or power of a picture,
indicates a wonderfully feeble sense of the presence
and power of God. I do not think that any man,*
OF THE FALSE IDEAL [paet iv
who is thoroughly certain that Christ is in the room,
will care what sort of pictures of Christ he has on
its walls; and, in the plurality of cases, the delight
taken in art of this kind is, in reality, nothing more
than a form of graceful indulgence of those sensi-
bilities which the habits of a disciplined life restrain
in pther directions. Such art is, in a word, the opera
and drama of the monk. Sometimes it is worse than
this, and the love of it is the mask under which a
general thirst for morbid excitement will pass itself
for religion. The young lady who rises in the middle
of the day, jaded by her last night’s ball, and utterly
incapable of any simple or wholesome religious exer-
cise, can still gaze into the dark eyes of the Madonna
di San Sisto, or dream over the whiteness of an
ivory crucifix, and returns to the course of her daily
life in full persuasion that her morning’s feverishness
has atoned for her evening’s folly. And all the
while, the art which possesses these very doubtful
advantages is acting for undoubtful detriment, in
the various ways above examined, on the ‘’inmost
fastnesses of faith; it is throwing subtle endearments
roimd foolish traditions, confusing sweet fancies with
sound doctrines, obscuring real events with unlikely
semblances, and enforcing false assertions with
pleasant circumstantiality, until, to the usual, and
assuredly^ sufficient, difficulties standing in the way
of belief, its votaries have added a habit of sentiment-
ally changing what they know to be true, and of
dearly loving what they confess to be false.
§ 20. Has .tihere, then (the reader asks emphatic-
ally), been no true religious’ ideal? Has religious
art never been of any service to mankind? I fear,
on the whole, not. Of true religious ideal, repre-
senting events historically recorded, with solemn
effort at a sincere and unartificial conception, there
exist, as yet, hardly any examples. Nearly all good
religious pictures fall into one or other branch of
the false ideal already examined, either into the
Angelican ^ (passionate ideal) or the Raphaelesque
(philosophical ideal). But there is one true form of
L RELIGIOUS
63
CHAP. IV]
religious art, nevertheless, in the pictures of the
passionate ideal which represent imaginarv beings of
another world. Since it is evidently right that we
should try to imagine the glories of the next world,
and as tnis imagination must be, in each separate
mind, more or less different, and unconfined by any
laws of material fact, the passionate ideal has not
only full scope here, but it becomes our duty to
urge its powers to its utmost, so that every condition
of beautiful form and colour may be employed to
invest these scenes with greater delightfulness (the
whole being, of course, received as an assertion of
possibility, not of absolute fact). All the paradises
imagined by the religious painters — ^the choirs of
glorified saints, angels, and spiritual powers, when
painted with full belief in this possibility of their
existence, are true ideals; and so far from our
having dwelt on these too much, I believe, rather,
we have not trusted them enough, nor accepted them
enough, as possible statements of most precious
truth, * Nothing but unmiXed good can accrue to any
mind from the contemplation of Orcagna’s Last
Judgment or his Triumph of Death, of Angelico’s
Last Judgment and Paradise, or any of the scenes
laid in heaven by the other faithful religious masters ;
and the more they are considered, not as works of
art, but as real visions of real things, more or less
imperfectly set down, the more good will be got by
dwelling upon them. The same is true of all repre-
pentations of Christ as g living presence among us
now, as in Hunt’s Light of the World.^
§ 21. For the rest, there is a reality of conception
in some of the works of Benozzo Gozzoli, Ghirlandajo,
and Giotto, which approaches to a true ideal, even
of recorded facts. But the examination of the
various degrees in which sacred art has reached its
proper power is not to our present purpose; still
less, to investigate the infinitely difficult question of
its past operation on the Christian mind. I hope to
prosecute my inquiry into this subject in another
work; it being enough here to mark the fo^rms of
64 OF TH^l FALSE IDEAL [papt iv
erroi*, without historically tracing their ejttent,
and to state generally that my impression is, up to
the presept moment, that the best religious art has
been hitherto rather a fruit, and attendant sign, of
sincere Christianity than a promoter of or help to
it. More, I think, has always been done for God
by few words than many pictures, and more by few
acts than many words.
§ 22. I must not, however, quit the subject with-
out insisting on the chief practical consequence of
what we have observed, namely, that sacred art, so
far from being exhausted, has yet to attain the de-
velopement of its highest branches; and the task,
or privilege, yet remains for mankind, to produce an
art which shall be at once entirely skilful and entirely
sincere. All the histories of the Bible are, in my
judgment, yet waiting to be painted. Moses has
never been painted; Elijah never; David never (ex-
cept as a mere ruddy stripling); Deborah never;
Gideon never; Isaiah never. What single example
does the reader remember of painting which sug-
gested so much as the faintest shadow of these people,
or of their deeds? Strong men in armour, or aged
men with flowing beards, he viay remember, who,
when he looked at his Louvre or Uffizi catalogue, he
found were intended to stand for David or for Moses,
But does he suppose that, if these pictures had sug-
gested to him the feeblest image of the presence of
such men, he would have passed on, as he assuredly
did, to the next picture- 7 -representing, doubtless,
Diana and Actaeon, or Cupid and the Graces, or a
gambling quarrel in a pothouse — ^with no sense of
pain, or surprise? Let him meditate over the matter,
and he will find ultimately that what I say is true,
and that religious art, at once complete and sincere,
never yet has existed,
^ § 28. It will exist : nay, I believe the era of its
bir& has come, and that those bright Turnerian
imageries, which the European public declared to
be ‘ dotage and those calm Pre-Raphaelite studies
which, in like manner, it nronounced * puerility \
I. RELIGIOUS
65
CHAP. IV]
form the first foundation that has been ever laid for
true sacred art. Of this we shall presently reason
farther. But, be it as it may, if we would cherish
the hope that sacred art may, indeed, arise for tis,
two separate cautions are to be addressed to the
two opposed classes of religionists whose influence
will chiefly retard that hope’s accomplishment. The
group calling themselves Evangelical Ought no longer
to render their religion an offence to men of the
world by associating it only with the most vulgar
forms of art. It is not necessary that they should
admit either music or painting into religious service;
but, if they admit either the one or the other, let it
not be bad music nor bad painting : it is certainly
in nowise more for Christ’s honour that His praise
should be sung discordantly, or His miracles painted
discreditably, than that His word should be preached
ungrammatically. Some Evangelicals, however,
seem to take a morbid pride in the triple degradation i.
§ 2^. The opposite class of men, whose natural
instincts lead them to mingle the refinements of art
with all the offices and practices of religion, are to be
warned, on the contrary, how they mistake their
enjoyments for their duties, or confound poetry with
faith. I admit that it is impossible for one man to
judge another in this matter, and that it can never
be said with certainty how far what seems frivolity
may be force, and what seems the indulgence of
1 I do not know anything more humiliating to a man of
common sense, than to open what is called*an ‘ Illustrated
Bible ’ of modern days. See, for instance, the plates in Brown’s
Bible (octavo : Edinburgh, 1840), a standard evangelical edition.
Our habit of reducing the Psalms to doggrel before we will
condescend to sing them, is a parallel abuse. It is marvellous
to think that human creatures with tongues and souls should
refuse to chant the verse : ‘ Before Ephraim, Benjamin, and
Mauasseh, stir up thy strength, and come and help us ’ :
preferring this; —
Behold, how Benjamin expects, ,
With Ephraim and Manasseh joined,
In their deliverance, the effects
Of thy resistless strength to find ! ^
M. P., III.
F
66 OF THF FALSE IDEAL [part iv
the heart may be, indeed, its dedication, I am ready
to believe that Metastasio, expiring in a canzonet,
may have died better than if his prayer had been
in unmeasured syllables But, for the most part,
it is assuredly much to be feared lest we mistake
a surrender to the charms of art for one to the service
of God; and, in the art which we permit, lest we
substitute sentiment for sense, grace for utility. And
for us all there is in this matter even a deeper
danger than that of indulgence. There is the danger
of Artistical Pharisaism. Of all the forms of pride
and vanity, as there are none more subtle, so I
believe there are none more sinful, than those which
are manifested by the Pharisees of art. To be proud
of birth, of place, of wit, of bodily beauty, is com-
paratively innocent, just because such pride is more
natural, and more easily detected. But to be proud
of our sanctities; to’l^our contempt upon our fellows,
because, forsooth, we like to look at Madonnas in
bowers of roses, better than at plain pictures *'of plain
things; and to make this religious art of ours the
expression of our own perpetual self-complacency —
congratulating ourselves, day by dajr, on our purities,
proprieties, elevations, and inspirations, as above the
reach of common mortals — ^this I believe to be one
of the wickedest and foolishest forms of human
egotism; and, truly, I had rather, with great,
thoughtless, humble Paul Veronese, make the Supper^
at Emmaus a background^. for two children playing
with a dog ias, God knows, men do usually put it
1 En 1780, &g6 de quatre-vingtJ-deux ans, au moment de
recevoir le viatique, il rassembla ses forces, et chanta, k son
Cr^ateur :
Eterno Genitor
lo t’ offro il proprio figlio
Che in pegno del tuo amor
Si vuole a me donar.
A lui rivolgi il ciglio,
Mira chi t’ offro ; e poi,
Niega, Signor, se puoi,
Niega di perdonar.
^ De Stendhal, Vte de Metastasio,
!!• PROFAKE
67
CHAP. V]
in the background to everything, if not out of sight
altogether), than join that school of modern German-
ism which wears its pieties for decoration as women
wear their diamonds, and flaunts the dry fleeces of
its phylacteries between its dust and the dew of
heaven.
CHAPTER V
OF THE FALSE IDEAL : SECONDLY, PROFANE
§ 1. Such having been the effects of the pursuit
of ideal beauty on the religious mind of Europe, we
might be tempted next to consider in what way the
same movement affected the art which concerned
itself with profane subject, and, through that art,
the whole temper of modern civilization,
I shall, however, merely glance at this question.
It is a yery painful and a very wide one. Its dis-
cussion cannot come properly within the limits, or
even within the aim, of a work like this; it ought
to be made the subject of a separate essay, and that
essay should be written by some one who had passed
less of his life than I have among mountains, and
more of it among men. But one or two points may
be suggested for the reader to reflect upon at his
leisure.
§ 2, I said just now that wo might be tempted to
consider how this pursuit® of the ideal affected pro-
fane art. Strictly speaking, it brought that art into
existence. As long as men sought for truth first,
and beauty secondarily, they cared chiefly, of course,
for the chief truth, and all art was instinctively re-
ligious. But as soon as they Bought for beauty first,
and truth secondarily, they were punished by losing
sight of spiritual truth altogether, and the profane
(properly so called) schools of art were instantly
developed.
The perfect human beauty, which, to a large part
of the community, was by far the most interesting
feature in the work of the rising school, might indeed®
68 OF THE FALSE IDEAL [part iv
be in some degree consistent with the agony of
Madonnas, and the repentance of Magdalenes; but
could not be exhibited in fulness, when the subjects,
however irreverently treated, nevertheless demanded
some decen^ in the artist, and some gravity in the
i^pectator. The newly acquired powers of rounding
limbs, and tinting lips, had too little scope in the
sanctities even of the softest womanhood; and the
newly acquired conceptions of the nobility of naked-
ness could in no wise be expressed beneath the robes
of the prelate or the sackcloth of the recluse. But
the source from which these ideas had been received
afforded also full field for their expression ; the
heathen mythology, which had furnished the ex-
amples of these heights of art, might again become
the subject of the inspirations it had kindled; — with
the additional advantage that it could now be de-
lighted in, without being believed; that its errors
might be indulged, unrepressed by its awe; and
those of its deities whose function was temptation
might be worshipped, in scorn of those whose hands
were charged with chastisement.
So, at least, men dreamed in their foolishness —
to find, as the ages wore on, that the returning
Apollo bore not only his lyre, but his arrows; and
that at the instant of Cytherea’s resurrection to the
sunshine, Persephone had reascended her throne in
the deep.
§ 3. Little thinking thig, they gave themselves up
fearlessly tw the chase of the new delight, and ex-
hausted themselves in the pursuit of an ideal now
doubly false. Formerly, though they attempted to
reach an unnatural beauty, it was yet in representing
historical facts and real persons; now they sought
for the same unnatural beauty in representing tales
which they knew to be fictitious, and personages
who they knew had never existed. Such a state of
^ings had never before been found in any nation.
Every people^ till then had painted the acts of their
kings, the triumphs of their armies, the beauty of
their race, or the glory of their gods. They showed
II. PROFANE
CHAP. V]
69
the things they had seen or done; -the beings they
truly loved or faithfully adored. But the ideal art
of modem Europe was the shadow of a shadow;
and, with mechanism substituted for perception, and
bodily beauty for spiritual life, it set itself to repre-
sent men it had never seen, customs it had never
practised, and gods in whom it had never believed.
§ 4. Such art could of course have no help from
the virtues, nor claim on the energies of men. It
necessarily rooted itself in their vices and their idle-
ness; and of their vices principally in two, pride
and sensuality. To the pride, was attached emi-
nently the art of architecture; to the sensuality,
those of painting and sculpture. Of the fall of
architecture, as resultant from the formalist pride
of its patrons and designers, I have spoken else-
where. The sensualist ideal, as seen in painting and
sculpture, remains to be examined here. But one
interestiig circumstance is to be observed with
respect to the manner of the separation of these
arts. Pride, being wholly a vice, and in every
phase inexcusable, wholly betrayed and destroyed the
art w’hich was founded on it. But passion, having
some root and use in healthy nature, and only be-
coming guilty in excess, did not altogether destroy
the art founded upon it. The architecture of Pal-
ladio is wholly virtueless and despicable. Not so
the Venus of Titian, nor the Antiope of Correggio.
§ 5. We find, then, ah the close of the sixteenth
century, the arts of painting and sculpture wholly
devoted to entertain the indolent and satiate the
luxurious. To eft'ect these noble ends, they took
a thousand different forms; painting, however, of
course being the most complying, aiming sometimes
at mere amusement by deception in landscapes, or
minute imitation of natural objects; sometimes
giving more piquant excitement in battle-pieces full of
slaughter, or revels deep in drunkenness; sometimes
entering upon serious subject, for the sake of
potesque fiends and picturesque infernos, or that
it might introduce pretty children as cherubs, anjj
Ill OF THE FALSE IDEAL [part iv
handsome women as Magdalenes, and Maries of
Egypt, or portraits of patrons in the character of the
more decorous saints : but more frequently, for
direct flatteries of this kind, recurring to Pagan
mythology, and painting frail ladies as goddesses or
graces, and foolish kings in radiant apotheosis; while,
for the earthly delict of the persons whom it
honoured as divine, it ransacked the records of lusci-
ous fable, and brought back, in fullest depth of dye
and flame of fancy, the impurest dreams of the un-
Christian ages.
§ 6. Meanwhile, the art of sculpture, less capable
of ministering to mere amusement, was more or less
reserved for the affectations of taste; and the study
of the classical statues introduced various ideas on
the subjects of ‘ purity * chastity and ‘ dignity
such as it was possible for people to entertain who
were themselves impure, luxurious, and ridiculous.
It is a matter of extreme difficulty to expjain the
exact character of this modern sculpturesque ideal;
but its relation to the true ideal may be best under-
stood by considering it as in exact parallelism with
the relation of the word ‘ taste ’ to the word * love *.
Wherever the word ‘ taste ' is used with respect to
matters of art, it indicates either that the thing
spoken of belongs to some inferior class of objects,
or that the person speaking has a false conception
of its nature. For, consider the exact sense in which
a work of art is said to bq.‘ in good or bad taste
It does not jpean that it is true, or false; that it is
beautiful, or ugly : but that it does or does not
comply either with the laws of choice, which are
enforced by certain modes of life; or the habits of
mind produced by a particular sort of education. It
does not mean merely fashionable, that is, complying
with a momentary caprice of the upper classes; but
it means agreeing with the habitual sense which the
most refined education, common to those upper
classes at the period, gives to their whole mind.
Now, therefore, so far as that education does indeed
tend to make the senses delicate, and the percep-
II. PROFANE
71
OHAP. V]
tions accurate, and thus enables people to be pleased
with quiet instead of gaudy colour, and with graceful
instead of coarse form; and,. by long acquaintance
with the best things, to discern quickly what is fine
from what is common; so far, acquired taste is an
honourable faculty, and it is true praise of anything
to say it is ‘ in good taste But so far as this
higher education has a tendency to narrow the sym-
pathies and harden the heart, diminishing the interest
of all beautiful things by familiarity, until e\en what
is best can hardly please, and what is brightest hardly
entertain; so far as it fosters pride, and leads men
to found the pleasure they take in anything, not on
the worthiness of the thing, but on the degree in
which it indicates some greatness of their own (as
people build marble porticoes, and inlay marble floors,
not so much because they like the colours of marble,
or find it pleasant to the foot, as because such porches
and floors are costly, and separated in all human
eyes from plain entrances of stone and timber); so
far as it leads people to prefer gracefulness of dress,
manner, and aspect, to value of substance and heart,
liking a well mid thing better than a true thing,
and a well-trained manner better than a sincere one,
and a delicately formed face better than a good-
natured one, and in all other ways and things set-
ting custom and semblance above everlasting truth;
so far, finally, as it induces a sense of inherent dis-
tinction between class ^d class, and causes every-
thing to be more or less despised which Jias no social
rank, so that the affection, pleasure, or grief of a
clown are looked upon as of no interest compared
with the affection and grief of a well-bred man; just
so far, in all these several ways, the feeling induced
by what is called a * liberal education ’ is utterly
adverse to the understanding of noble art; and the
name which is given to the feeling — Taste, Gofit,
Gusto — in all languages, indicates the baseness of
it, for it implies that art gives only a kind of pleasure
analogous to that derived from eating by the palate.
§ 7. Modern education, not in art only, but in all
OF THE FALSE IDEAL [part iv
otLer things referable to the same standard, has in-
variably given taste in this bad sense; it has given
fastidiousness of choice without judgment, super-
ciliousness of manner without dignity, refinement of
habit without purity, grace of expression without sin-
cerity, and desire of loveliness without love; and the
mbdern ‘ ideal ’ of high art is a curious mingling of
the gracefulness and reserve of the drawingroom with
a certain measure of classical sensuality. Of this last
element, and the singular artifices by which vice
succeeds in combining it with what appears to be
? ure and severe, it would take us long to reason fully;
would rather leave the reader to follow out for
himself the consideration of the influence, in this
direction, of statues, bronzes, and paintings, as at
present employed by the upper circles of London, and
(especially) Paris ; and this not so much in the works
which are really fine, as in the multiplied coarse
copies of them; taking the widest range, fropi Dan-
naeker’s Ariadne down to the amorous shepherd and
shepherdess in china on the drawing-room time-piece,
rigidly questioning, in each case, how far the charm
of the art does indeed depend on some appeal to the
inferior passions. Let it be considered, for instance,
exactly how far the value of a picture of a girl’s
head by Greuze would be lowered in the market, if
the dress, which now leaves the bosom bare, were
raised to the neck; and how far, in the commonest
lithograph of some utterly popular subject — for in-
stance, the teaching of Uncle Tom by Eva — the
sentiment which is supposed- to he excited by the
exhibition of Christianity in youth is complicated with
that which depends upon Eva’s having a dainty foot
and a well-made satin slipper; and then, having com-
pletely determined for himself how far the element
exists, consider farther, whether, when art is thus
frequent (for frequent he will assuredly find it to be)
in its appeal to the lower passions, it is likely to
attain the highest order of merit, or be judged by
the truest standards of judgment. For, of all the
causes which have combined, in modern times, to
II. PROFANE
73
CHAP. V]
lower the rank of art, I believe this to be one of
the most fatal; while, reciprocally, it may be ques-
tioned how far society suffers, in its turn, from the
influences possessed over it by the arts it has de-
graded. It seems to me a subject of the very deepest
interest to determine what has been the effect upon
the European nations of the great change by which
art became again capable of ministering delicately to
the lower passions, as it had in the worst days of
Rome; how far, indeed, in all ages, the fall of
nations may be attributed to art’s arriving at this
particular stage among them. I do not mean that,
in any of its stages, it is incapable of being employed
for evil, but that assuredly an Egyptian, Spartan, or
Norman was unexposed to the kind of temptation
which is continually offered by the delicate painting
and sculpture of modern days; and, although the
diseased imagination might complete the imperfect
image ^of beauty from the coloured image on the
wall 1, or the most revolting thoughts be suggested
by the mocking barbarism of the Gothic sculpture,
their hard outline and rude execution were free from
all the subtle treachery which now fills the flushed
canvass and the rounded marble.
§ 8. I cannot, however, pursue this inquiry here.
For our present purpose it is enough to note that the
feeling, in itself so debased, branches upwards into
that of which, while no one has cause to be ashamed,
no one, on the other hand, has cause to be proud,
namely, the admiration of physical beauty in the
human form, as distinguished from expression of
character. Every one can easily appreciate the merit
of regular features and well-formed limbs, but it
requires some attention, sympathy, and sense, to
detect the charm of passing expression, or life-dis-
ciplined character. The beauty of the Apollo Belvi-
dere, or Venus de Medicis, is perfectly palpable to
any shallow fine lady or fine gentleman, though they
would have perceived none in the face of an old
weather-beaten St Peter, or a grey-haired ‘ Grand-
1 Ezek,, xxiii, 14. •
OF THE FALSE IDEAL [part iv
mother Loie The knowledge that long study is
necessary to produce these regular types of the
human form renders the facile admiration matter of
eager self-complacency; the shallow spectator, de-
lighted that he can really, and without hypocrisy,
aojnire what required much thought to produce, sup-
poses himself endowed with the highest critical facul-
ties, and easily lets himself be carried into rhapsodies
about the ‘ ideal ’, which, when all is said, if they be
accurately examined, will be found literally to mean
nothing more than that the figure has got handsome
calves to its legs, and a straight nose.
§ 9. That they do mean, in reality, nothing more
than this may be easily ascertained by watching the
taste of the same persons in other things. The
fashionable lady who will write five or six pages in
her diary respecting the effect upon her mind of such
and sucn an ‘ ideal * in marble, will have her draw-
ingroom table covered with Books of Beauty, iq which
the engravings represent the human form in every
possible aspect of distortion and affectation; and
the connoisseur who, in the morning, pretends to
the most exquisite taste in the antique, will be seen,
in the evening, in his opera-stall, applauding the
least graceful gestures of the least modest figurante.
§ 10. But even this vulgar pursuit of physical
beauty (vulgar in the profoundest sense, for there is
no vulgarity like the vulgarity of education) would be
less contemptible if it reallju succeeded in its object;
but, like all pursuits carried to inordinate length, it
defeats itself. Physical beauty is a noble thing when
it is seen in perfectness; but the manner in which
the moderns pursue their ideal prevents their ever
really seeing what they are always seeking; for,
requiring that all forms should be regular and fault-
less, they permit, or even compel, their painters and
sculptors to work chiefly by rule, altering their
models to fit their preconceived notions of what
is right. When such artists look at a face, they do
not give it the attention necessary to discern what
b^^auty is already in its peculiar features; but only
II. PROFAlJE
78
CHAP. V]
to see how best it mey be altered into something for
which they have themselves laid down the laws.
Nature never unveils her beauty to such a gaze. She
keeps whatever she has done best, close sealed^ until
it is regarded with reverence. To the painter who
honours her, she will open a revelation in the face of
a street mendicant; but in the work of the painter
who alters her, she will make Portia become ignoble,
and Perdita graceless.
§ 11. Nor is the effect less for evil on the mind of
the general observer. The lover of ideal beauty, with
all his conceptions narrowed by rule, never looks care-
fully enough upon the features which do not come
under his law (or any others), to discern the inner
beauty in them. The strange intricacies about the
lines of the lips, and marvellous shadows and watch-
fires of the eye, and wavering traceries of the eye-
lash, and infinite modulations of the brow, wherein
high humanity is embodied, are all invisible to him.
He finds himself driven back at last, with all his
idealism, to the lionne of the ball-room, whom youth
and passion can as easily distinguish as his utmost
critical science ; whereas, the observer who has accus-
tomed himself to take human faces as God made
them, will often find as much beauty on a village
green as in the proudest room of state, and as much
in the free seats of a church aisle, as in all the sacred
paintings of the Vatican or the Pitti.
§ 12. Then, farther, iiie habit of disdaining ordin-
ary truth, and seeking to alter it so %s to fit the
fancy of the beholder, gradually infects the mind in
all its other operation; so that it begins to propose
to itself an ideal in history, an ideal in general narra-
tion, an ideal in portraiture and description, and in
every thing else where truth may be painful or unin-
teresting; with the necessary result of more or less
weakness, wickedness, and uselessness in all that is
done or said, with the desire of concealing this pain-
ful truth. And, finally, even when truth is not inten-
tionally concealed, the pursuer of idealism will pass
his days in false and useless trains of thought, plum-
#6 OF THE FALSE IDEAL [part iv
ing himself, all the while, upon his superiority therein
to the rest of mankind. A modern German, without
either invention or sense, seeing a rapid in a river,
will immediately devote the remainder of the day to
the composition of dialogues between amorous water
nymphs and unhappy mariners; while the man of
true invention, power, and sense will, instead, set
himself to consider whether the rocks in the river
could have their points knocked off, or the boats
upon it be made with stronger bottoms.
§ 13. Of this final baseness of the false ideal, its
miserable waste of the time, strength, and available
intellect of man, by turning, as I have said above,
iimocenoe of pastime into seriousness of occupation,
it is, of course, hardly possible to sketch out even
so much as the leading manifestations. The vain and
haughty projects of youth for future life; the giddy
reveries of insatiable self-exaltation ; the discontented
dreams of what might have been or should tbe, in-
stead of the thankful understanding of what is; the
casting about for sources of interest in senseless fic-
tion, instead of the real human histories of the people
round us ; the prolongation from age to age of
romantic historical deceptions instead of sifted truth;
the pleasures taken in fanciful portraits of rural or
romantic life in poetry and on the stage, without the
smallest effort to rescue the living rural population
of the world from its ignorance or misery; the ex-
citement of the feelings by •laboured imagination of
spirits, fairie^, monsters, and ^emons, issuing in total
blindness of heart and sight to the true presences of
beneficent or destructive spiritual powers around us;
in fine, the constant abandonment of all the straight-
forward paths of sense and duty, for fear of losing
some of the enticement of ghostly joys, or trampling
somewhat ‘ sopra lor vanit^, che par persona ’; all
these various forms of false idealism have so en-
tangled the modern mind, often called, I suppose
ironically, practical, that truly I believe there never
yet was idolatry of stock or staff so utterly unholy
sfe this our idolatry of shadows ; nor can I think that.
77
CHAP.vi] OF THE TRUE IDEAL
of those who burnt incense under oaks, and poplars,
and elms, because ‘ the shadow thereof was good
it could in any wise be more justly or sternly
declared than of us — ‘ The wind hath bound them
up in her wings, and they shall be ashamed because
of their sacrifices. i ’
CHAPTER VI
OF THE TRUE IDEAL : FIRST, PURIST
§ 1. Having thus glanced at the principal modes
in which the imagination works for evil, we must
rapidly note also the principal directions in which its
operation is admissible, oven in changing or strangely
combining what is brought within its sphere.
For hitherto we have spoken as if every change
wilfuUy wrought by the imagination was an error;
apparently implying that its only proper work was
to summon up the memories of past events, and the
anticipations of future ones, under aspects which
would bear the sternest tests of historical investiga-
tion, or abstract reasoning. And in general this is,
indeed, its noblest work. Nevertheless, it has also
permissible functions peculiarly its own, and certain
rights of feigning, adorning, and fancifully arrang-
ing, inalienable from its nature. Everything that is
natural is, within certsBln limits, right; and we must
take care not, in over-severity, to deprive ourselves
of any refreshing or animating power ordained to be
in us for our help.
§ 2, (A). It was noted in speaking above of the
Angelican or passionate ideal, that there was a cer-
tain virtue in it dependent on the expression of its
loving enthusiasm (Chap. IV, § 10).
(B). In speaking of the pursuit of beauty as one
of the characteristics of the highest art, it was also
said that there were certain ways of showing this
1 Hosea, chap, iv, 12, 13 and 19.
Ift OF THE TRUE IDEAL [past iv
beauty by gathering together, without altering, the
finest forms, and marking them by gentle emphasis
(Chap. Ill, § 15).
(C). And in speaking of the true uses of imagina-
tion it was said, that we might be allowed to create
for ourselves, in innocent play, fairies and naiads,
and other such fictitious creatures (Chap. IV, § 5).
Now this loving enthusiasm, which seeks for a
beauty fit to be the object of eternal love; this in-
ventive skill, which kindly displays what exists
around us in the world; and this playful energy of
thought which delights in various conditions of the
impossible, are three forms of idealism more or less
connected with the three tendencies of the artistical
mind which I had occasion to explain in the chapter
on the Nature of Gothic, in the Stones of Venice, It
was there pointed out, that, the things around us
containing mixed good and evil, certain men chose
the good and left the evil (thence properly called
Purists) ; others received both good and evil together
(thence properly called Naturalists); and others had
a tendency to choose the evil and leave the good,
whom, for convenience’ sake, I termed Sensualists.
I do not mean to say that painters of fairies and
naiads must belong to this last and lowest class, or
habitually choose the evil and leave the good; but
there is, nevertheless, a strange connection between
the reinless play of the imagination, and* a sense of
the presence of evil, which usually more or less
developed in Jihose creations of the imagination to
which we properly attach the word Grotesque,
For this reason, we shall find it convenient to
arrange what we have to note respecting true idealism
under the three heads
A. Purist Idealism
B. Naturalist Idealism
C. Grotesque Idealism.
§ 3. (A). Purist Idealism. It results from the un-
willingness of men whose dispositions are more than
ordinarily tender and holy, to contemplate the vari-
ous forms of definite evil which necessarily occur in
I. PURIST
70
CHAP. Vl]
the daily aspects of the world around them. They
shrink from them as from pollution, and endeavour
to create for themselves an imaginary state, in which
pain and imperfection either do not exist, or exist
in some edgeless and enfeebled condition.
As, however, pain and imperfection are, by eternal
laws, bound up with existence, so far as it is visible
to us, the endeavour to cast them away invariably
indicates a comparative childishness of mind, and
produces a childish form of art. In general, the
effort is most successful when it is most naive, and
when the ignorance of the draughtsman is in some
frank proportion to his innocence. For instance, one
of the modes of treatment, the most conducive to
this ideal expression, is simply drawing everything
without shadows, as if the sun were everywhere at
once. This, in the present state of our knowledge,
we could not do with grace, because we could not
do it without fear or shame. But an artist of the
thirteeifth century did it with no disturbance of con-
science — ^knowing no better, or rather, in some sense,
we might say, knowing no worse. It is, however,
evident, at the first thought, that all representations
of nature without evil must either be ideals of a
future world, or be false ideals, if they are under-
stood to be representations of facts. They can only
be classed among the branches of the true ideal, in
BO far as they are understood to be nothing more
than expressions of the painter’s personal affections
or hopes. ^
§ 4. Let us take one or two instances in order
clearly to explain our meaning.
The life of Angelico was almost entirely spent in
the endeavour to imagine the beings belonging to
another world. By purity of life, habitual elevation
of thought, and natural sweetness of disposition, he
was enabled to express the sacred affections upon
the human countenance as no one ever did before
or since. In order to effect clearer distinction be-
tween heavenly beings and those of this world, he
represents the former as clothed in draperies of the
so OF THE TRUE IDEAL [paet iv
purest colour, crowned with glories of burnished gold,
and entirely shadowless. With exquisite choice of
gesture, and disposition of folds of drapery, this mode
of treatment gives perhaps the best idea of spiritual
beings which the human mind is capable of forming.
It is, therefore, a true ideal but the mode in
which it is arrived at (being so far mechanical and
•contradictory of the appearances of nature) neces-
sarily precludes those who practise it from being com-
plete masters of their art. It is always childi^, but
beautiful in its childishness.
§ 5 , The works of our own Stothard are examples
of the operation of another mind, singular in gentle-
ness and purity, upon mere worldly subject. It
seems as if Stothard could not conceive wickedness,
coarseness, or baseness; every one of his figures
looks as if it had been copied from some creature
who had never harboured an unkind thought, or per-
mitted itself in an ignoble action. With this intense
love of mental purity is joined, in Stothard, a love
of mere physical smoothness and softness, so that he
lived in a universe of soft grass and stainless foun-
tains, tender trees, and stones at which no loot could
stumble.
All this is very beautiful, and may sometimes urge
us to an endeavour to make the world itself more
like the conception of the painter. At least, in the
midst of its malice, misery, and baseness, it is often
a relief to glance at the gr^^ceful shadows, and take,
for momentj^ry companionship, creatures full only of
love, gladness, and honour. ^ But the perfect truth
will at last vindicate itself against the partial truth;
the help which we can gain from the unsubstantial
vision will be only like that which we may some-
times receive, in weariness, from the scent of a flower
or the passing of a breeze. For all firm aid, and
steady use, we must look to harder realities; and,
as far as the painter himself is regarded, we can
'Only receive such work as the sign of an amiable
^ As noted above in Chap. IV, § 20.
1. PUBIST
81
CHAP. Vl]
imbecility. It is indeed ideal; but ideal as a fair
dream is in the dawn of morning, before the faculties
are astir. The apparent completeness of grace can
never be attained without much definite falsification
as well as omission; stones, over which we cannot
stumble, must be ill-drawn stones; trees, which are
all gentleness and softness, cannot be trees of wood;
nor companies without evil in them, companies of
flesh and blood. The habit of falsification (with
whatever aim) begins always in dulness and ends
always in incapacity : nothing can be more pitiable
than any endeavour by Stothard to express facts
beyond his own sphere of soft pathos or graceful
mirth, and nothing more unwise than the aim at
a similar ideality by any painter who has power to
render a sincerer truth.
§ 6, I remember another interesting example of
ideality on this same root, but belonging to another
branch of it, in the works of a young German painter,
which I saw some time ago in a London drawing-
room. •He had boon travelling in Italy, and had
brought home a portfolio of sketches remarkable alike
for their fidelity and purity. Every one was a
laborious and accurate study of some particular spot.
Every cottage, every cliff, every tree, at the site
chosea, had been drawn; and drawm with palpable
sincerity of portraiture, and yet in such a spirit that it
was impossible to conceive that any sin or misery had
ever entered into one of the scenes he had repre-
sented; and the volcani* horrors of Radicofani, the
pestilent gloom of the Pon tines, and tlie boundless
despondency of the Campagna became, under his
hand, only various appearances of Paradise.
It was very interesting to observe the minute
emendations or omissions by which this was effected.
To set the tiles the slightest degree more in order
upon a cottage roof; to insist upon the vine-leaves
at the window, and let the shadow which fell from
them naturally conceal the rent in the wall; to draw
all the flowers in the foreground, and miss the
weeds; to draw all the folds of the white clouds,
M. P., III. G •
B2 OF THE TRUE IDEAL [part iv
and miss those of the black ones; to mark the
graceful branches of the trees, and, in one way or
another, beguile the eye from those which were
ungainly; to give every peasant-girl whose face was
visible the expression of an angel, and every one
whose back was turned the bearing of a princess;
finally, to give a general look of light, clear organiza-
tion and serene vitality to every feature in the land-
scape; such were his artifices, and such his delights.
It was impossible not to sympathize deeply with
the spirit of such a painter; and it was just cause
for gratitude to be permitted to travel, as it were,
through Italy with such a friend. But his work had,
nevertheless, its stern limitations and marks of ever-
lasting inferiority. Always soothing and pathetic,
it could never be sublime, never perfectly nor en-
trancingly beautiful; for the narrow spirit of correc-
tion could not cast itself fully into any scene; the
calm cheerfulness which shrank from the shadow of
the cypress, and the distortion of the olive, could
not enter into the brightness of the sky that they
pierced, nor the softness of the bloom that they bore :
for every sorrow that his heart turned from, he lost
a consolation; for every fear which he dared not
confront, he lost a portion of his hardiness; the
unsceptred sweep of the storm-clouds, the fair free-
dom of glancing shower and flickering sunbeam, sank
into sweet rectitudes and decent formalisms; and,
before eyes that refused to be dazzled or darkened,
the hours of sunset wreathed their rays unheeded,
and the mirts of the Apennines spread their blue
veils in vain. ^
§ 7. To this inherent shortcoming and narrow-
ness of reach the farther defect was added, that this
work gave no useful representation of the state of
facts in the country which it pretended to contem-
plate. It was not only wanting in all the higher
elements of beauty, but wholly unavailable for in-
struction of any kind beyond that which exists in
pleasurableness of pure emotion. And considering
what cost of labour was devoted to the series of
CHAP, vi] I. PURIST 88
drawings, it could not but be matter for grave blame,
as well as for partial contempt, that a man of
amiable feeling and considerable intellectual power
should thus expend his life in the declaration of his
own petty pieties and pleasant reveries, leaving the
burden of human sorrow unwitnessed, and the power
of God’s judgments unconfessed; and, while poor
Italy lay wounded and moaning at his feet, pass by,
in priestly calm, lest the whiteness of his decent
vesture should be spotted with unhallowed blood.
§ 8. Of several other forms of Purism I shall have
to speak hereafter, more especially of that exhibited
in the landscapes of the early religious painters; but
these examples are enough, for the present, to show
the general principle that the purist ideal, though
in some measure true, in so far as it springs from
the true longings of an earnest mind, is yet neces-
sarily in many things deficient or blameable, and
always an indication of some degree of weakness in
the mind pursuing it. But, on the other hand, it
is to be noted that entire scorn of this purist ideal
is the sign of a far greater weakness. Multitudes
of petty artists, incapable of any noble sensation
whatever, but acquainted, in a dim way, with the
technicalities of the schools ^ mock at the art whose
depths they cannot fathom, and whose motives they
cannot comprehend, but of which they can easily
detect the imperfections, and deride the simplicities.
Thus poor funiigatory Fuseli, with an art composed
of the tinsel of the sta^e and the panics of the
nursery, speaks contemptuously of th% name of
Angelico as ‘ dearer to sanctity than to art ’. And a
large portion of the resistance to the noble Pre-
Raphaelite movement of our own days has been
offered by men who suppose the entire function of
the artist in this world to consist in laying on colour
with a large brush, and surrounding dashes of flake
white with bituminous brown ; men whose entire
capacities of brain, soul, and sympathy, applied in-
dustriously to the end of their lives, would not enable
them, at last, to paint so much as one of the leaves
OF THE TRUE IDEAL [part iv
of the nettles at the bottom of Hunt’s picture of
the Light of the World
§ 9. It is finally to be remembered, therefore, that
Purism is always noble when it is instinctive* It
is not the greatest thing that can be done, but it
is probably the greatest thing that the man who does
it can do, provided it comes from his heart. True,
it is a sign of weakness, but it is not in our choice
whether we will be weak or strong; and there is a
certain strength which can only be made perfect
in weakness. If he is working in humility, fear of
evil, desire of beauty, and sincere purity of purpose
and thought, he will produce good and helpful things;
but he must be much on his guard against suppos-
ing himself to be greater than his fellows, because
he has shut himself into this calm and cloistered
sphere. His only safety lies in knowing himself to
be, on the contrary, less than his fellows, and in
always striving, so far as he can find it in his heart,
to extend his delicate narrowness towards the great
naturalist ideal. The whole group of modern Ger-
man purists have lost themselves, because they
founded their work not on humility, nor on religion,
but on small self-conceit. Incapable of understand-
ing the great Venetians, or any other masters of
true imaginative power, and having fed what mind
they had with weak poetry and false philosophy, they
thought themselves the best and greatest of artistic
mankind, and expected to found a new school of
painting in pious plagiarisifi and delicate pride. It
is difficult aV first to decide which is the more worth-
less, the spiritual affectation of the petty German,
or the composition and chiaroscuro of the petty Eng-
lishman; on the whole, however, the latter have
lightest weight, for the pseudo-religious painter must,
at all events, pass much of his time in meditation
1 Not that the Pre-Raphaelite is a purist movement, it is
stern naturalist ; but its unfortunate opposers, who neither
know what nature is, nor what purism is, have mistaken the
simple nature for morbid purism, and therefore cried out
against it.
II. NATURALIST
85
CHAP. VII J
upon solemn subjects, and in examining venerable
models; and may sometimes even cast a little use-
ful reflected light, or touch the heart with a pleasant
echo.
CHAPTER VII
OP THE TRUE IDEAL! SECONDLY, NATURALIST
§ 1. We now enter on the consideration of that
central and highest branch of ideal art which con-
cerns itself simply with things as they are, and
accepts, in all of them, alike the evil and the good.
The question is, therefore, how the art which repre-
sents things simply as they are, can be called ideal
at all. How does it meet that requirement stated
in Chap. HI, § 4, as imperative on all great art,
that it shall be inventive, and a product of the
imagination? It meets it pre-eminently by that
power ef arrangement which I have endeavoured, at
great length and with great pains, to define accurately
in the chapter on Imagination associative in the
second volume. That is to say, accepting the weak-
nesses, faults, and wrongnesses in all things that it
sees, it so places and harmonizes them that they
form a noble whole, in which the imperfection of
each several part is not only harmless, but absolutely
essential, and yet in which whatever is good in each
several part shall be completely displayed.
§ 2. This operation oi true idealism holds, from
the least things to the greatest. For in^ance, in the
arrangement of the smallest masses of colour, the
false idealist, or even the purist, depends upon per-
fecting each separate hue, and raises them all, as
far as he can, into costly brilliancy; but the natural-
ist takes the coarsest and feeblest colours of the
things around him, and so interweaves and opposes
them that they become more lovely than if they had
all been bright. So in the treatment of the human
form. The naturalist will take it as he finds it; but,
with such examples as his picture may rationally
86 OF THE TRUE IDEAL [paiit iv
admit of more or less exalted beauty, he will associate
inferior forms, so as not only to set off those which
are most beautiful, but to bring out clearly what
good there is in the inferior forms themselves ; finally
using such measure of absolute evil as there is com-
monly in nature, both for teaching and for contrast.
In Tintoret’s Adoration of the Magi, the Madonna
is not an enthroned queen, but a fair girl, full of
simplicity and almost childish sweetness. To her are
opposed (as Magi) two of the noblest and most
thoughtful of the Venetian senators in extreme old
age — the utmost manly dignity, in its decline, being
set beside the utmost feminine simplicity, in its
dawn. The steep foreheads and refined features of
the nobles are, again, opposed to the head of a negro
servant, and of an Indian, both, however, noble of
their kind. On the other side of the picture, the
delicacy of the Madonna is farther enhanced by con-
trast with a largely made farm-servant, leaning on
a basket. All these figures are in repose : "outside,
the troop of the attendants of the Magi is seen coming
up at the gallop.
§ 3. 1 bring forward this picture, observe, not as
an example of the ideal in conception of religious
subject, but of the general ideal treatment of the
human form; in which the peculiarity is, that the
beauty of each figure is displayed to the utmost,
while yet, taken separately the Madonna is an un-
altered portrait of a Venetian girl, the Magi are
unaltered Venetian senators, and the figure with the
basket, an unaltered market-wq^an of Mestre.
And the greater the master of the ideal, the more
perfectly true in portraiture will his individual figures
be alwaj^s found, the more subtle and bold his arts
of harmony and contrast. This is a universal prin-
ciple, common to all great art. Consider, in Shak-
speare, how Prince Henry is opposed to Falstaff,
Falstaff to Shallow, Titania to Bottom, Cordelia to
Regan, Imogen to Cloten, and so on; while all the
meaner idealists disdain the naturalism, and are
shocked at the contrasts. The fact is, a man who
CHAP, vii] II. NATURALIST 87
can see truth at all, sees it wholly, and neither
desires nor dares to mutilate it.
§ 4. It is evident that within this faithful idealism,
and as one branch of it only, will arrange itself the
representation of the human form and mind in per-
fection, when this perfection is rationally to be sup-
posed or introduced — that is to say, in the highest
personages of the story. The careless habit of con-
fining the term ‘ ideal ’ to such representations, and
not understanding the imperfect ones to be equally
ideal in their place, has greatly added to the em-
barrassment and multiplied the errors of artists
Thersites is just as ideal as Achilles, and Alecto as
Helen; and, what is more, all the nobleness of the
beautiful ideal depends upon its being just as prob-
able and natural as the ugly one, and having in itself,
occasionally or partially, both faults and familiarities.
If the next painter who desires to illustrate the
character of Homer’s Achilles, would represent him
cutting pork chops for Ulysses 2 , he would enable
the public to understand the Homeric ideal better
than they have done for several centuries. For it
is to be kept in mind that the naturalist ideal has
always in it, to the full, the power expressed by those
two words. It is naturalist, because studied from
nature, and ideal, because it is mentally arranged
in a certain manner. Achilles must be represented
cutting pork chops, because that was one of the
things which the nat^ire of Achilles involved his
doing : he could not be shown wholly as Achilles, if
he were not shown doing that. But he shall do it
at such time and place as Homer chooses.
§ 5. Now, therefore, observe the main conclusions
which follow from these two conditions, attached
always to art of this kind. First, it is to be taken
straight from nature; it is to be the plain narration
of something the painter or writer saw. Herein is
1 The word ‘ ideal ’ is used in this limited sense in the chapter
on Generic Beauty in the second volume, but under protest.
See § 4 in that chapter.
2 n., ix, 209.
88
OF THE TRUE IDEAL [part iv
the chief practical difference between the higher and
lower artists; a difference which I feel more and
more every day that I give to the study of art. All
the great men see what they paint before they paint
it — see it in a perfectly passive manner — cannot
help seeing it if they would; whether in their mind’s
eye, or in bodily fact, does not matter; very often
the mental vision is, I believe, in men of imagination,
clearer than the bodily one; but vision it is, of one
kind or another — the whole scene, character, or
incident passing before them as in second sight,
whether they will or no, and requiring them to paint
it as they see it; they not daring, under the might
of its presence, to alter i one jot or tittle of it as
they write it down or paint it down; it being to
them in its own kind and degree always a true vision
or Apocalypse, and invariably accompanied in their
hearts by a feeling correspondent to the words,
‘ Write the things which thou hast seen, and the
things which are.' *
And the whole power, whether of painter or poet,
to describe rightly what we call an ideal thing, de-
pends upon its being thus, to him, not an ideal, but
a real thing. No man ever did or ever will work
well, but either from actual sight or sight of faith;
and all that we call ideal in Greek or any other art,
because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the
makers of it, true and existent. The heroes of
Phidias are simply representations of such noble
human persons as he every day saw, and the gods
of Phidias simply representations of such noble divine
persons as he thoroughly believed to exist, and did
in mental vision truly behold. Hence I said in the
second preface to the Seven Lamps of Architecture :
* All great art represents something that it sees or
believes in; — nothing unseen or uncredited.*
§ 6. And just because it is always something that
it sees or believes in, there is the peculiar character
1 * And yet yon have just said it shall be at such time and
place as Homer chooses. Is not this altering ? ’ No ; wait a
little, and read on.
II. NATURALIST
89
CHAP. Vll]
above noted, almost unmistakeable, in all high and
true ideals, of having been as it were studied from
the life, and involving pieces of sudden familiarity,
and close specific painting which never would have
been admitted or even thought of, had not the
painter drawn either from the bodily life or from the
life of faith. For instance, Dante’s centaur, Chiron,
dividing his beard with his arrow before he can
speak, is a thing that no mortal would ever have
thought of, if he had not actually seen the centaur
do it. They might have composed handsome bodies
of men and horses in all possible ways, through a
whole life of pseudo -idealism, and yet never dreamed
of any such thing. But the real living centaur
actually trotted across Dante’s brain, and he saw
him do it.
§ 7. And on account of this reality it is, that the
great idealists venture into all kinds of what, to the
pseudo-idealists, are ‘ vulgarities ’. Nay, venturing
is the ^rong word; the great men have no choice
in the matter; they do not know or care whether
the things they describe are vulgarities or not. They
saw them; they are the facts of the case. If they
had merely composed what they describe, they would
have had it at their will to refuse this circumstance
or add that. But they did not compose it. It came
to them ready fashioned; they were too much im-
pressed by it to think what was vulgar or not vulgar
in it. It might be a vei^ wrong thing in a centaur
to have so much beard ; but so it was. Ar)^, therefore,
among the various ready tests of true greatness there
is not any more certain than this daring reference
to, or use of, mean and little things — mean and
little, that is, to mean and little minds; but, when
used by the great men, evidently part of the noble
whole which is authoritatively present before them.
Thus, in the highest poetry, as partly above noted
in the first chapter, there is no word so familiar but
a great man will bring good out of it, or rather, it
will bring good to him, and answer some end for
which no other word would have done equally well^
% OF THE TRUE IDEAL [part iv
§ 8. A‘ common person, for instance, would be
mightily puzzled to apply the word ‘ whelp ’ to any
one with a view of flattering him. There is a certain
freshness and energy in the term, which gives it
agreeableness; but it seems difficult, at first hearing,
to use it complimentarily. If the person spoken of
be a prince, the difficulty seems increased; and
when, farther, he is at one and the same moment to
be called a ‘ whelp ’ and contemplated as a hero, it
seems that a common idealist might well be brought
to a pause. But hear Shakspeare do it :
Invoke his warlike spirit,
And your great nude’s, Edward the Black Prince,
Whp on the French ground play’d a tragedy,
Making defeat on the full power of France,
While his most mighty father on a hill
Stood smiling, to behold his lion’s whelp
Forage in blood of French nobility.
So a common idealist would have been rather
alarmed at the thought of introducing the name of a
street in Paris — Straw Street — Rue de Fouarre — ^into
the midst of a description of the highest heavens.
Not so Dante :
Beyond, thou mayst the flaming lustre scan
Of Isidore, of Bede, and that Richart
Who was in contemplation more than man.
And he, from whom thy looks returning are
To me, a spirit was, that in austere
Deep musings often thought death kept too far.
That is the light eternal of Sigier,
Wlio while in Rue de Fouarre his days he wore.
Has argued hateful truths in haughtiest ear.
Cayley.
What did it matter to Dante, up in heaven there,
whether the mob below thought him vulgar or not?
Sigier had road in Straw Street; that was the fact,
and he had to say so, and there an end.
§ 9. There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of
innate and real vulgarity of mind or defective educa-
tion than the want of power to understand the
universality of the ideal truth ; the absence of
CHAP. VII] IJ. NATURALIST ^ 91
sympathy with the colossal grasp of those intellects,
which have in them so much of divine, that nothing
is small to them- and nothing large; but with equal
and unoffended vision they take in the sum of the
world — Straw Street and the seventh heavens — in
the same instant. A certain portion of this divine
spirit is visible even in the lower examples of all
the true men; it is, indeed, perhaps, the clearest
test of their belonging to the true and great group,
that they are continually touching what to the multi-
tude appear vulgarities. The higher a man stands,
the more the word ‘ vulgar ’ becomes unintelligible
to him. Vulgar? what, that poor farmer’s girl of
William Hunt’s, bred in the stable, putting on her
Sunday gown, and pinning her best cap out of the
green and red pin-cushion! Not so; she may be
straight on the road to those high heavens, and may
shine hereafter as one of the stars in the firmament
for ever. Nay, even that lady in the satin bodice
with her arm laid over a balustrade to show it, and
her eyes turned up to heaven to show them ; and the
sportsman waving his rifle for the terror of beasts,
and displaying his perfect dress for the delight of
men, are kept, by the very misery and vanity of
them, in the thoughts of a great painter, at a sorrow-
ful level, somewhat above vulgarity. It is only
when the minor painter takes them on his easel, that
they become things for the universe to be ashamed of.
We may dismiss this matter of vulgarity in plain
and few words, at least *a8 far as regards art. There
is never vulgarity in a whole truth, howler common-
place. It may be unimportant or painful. It can-
not be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment cf
truth, or in affectation.
§ 10. ‘ Well, but ’, (at this point the reader asks
doubtfully,) ‘ if then your great central idealist is
to show all truth, low as well as lovely, receiving it
in this passive way, what becomes of all your prin-
ciples of selection, and of setting in the right place,
which you were talking about up to the end of your
fourth paragraph? How is Homer to enforce upon
ai OF THE TRUE IIJEAL [part iv
Achilles the cutting of the pork chops ‘ only at such
time as Homer chooses if Homer is to have no
choice, but merely to see the thing done, and sing
it as he sees it?’ Why, the choice, as well as the
vision, is manifested to Homer. The vision comes
to him in its chosen order. Chosen for him, not
6|/,.him, but yet full of visible and exquisite choice,
just as a sweet and perfect dream will come to a
sweet and perfect person, so that, in some sense,
they may be said to have chosen their dream, or
composed it; and yet they could not help dreaming
it so, and in no other wisel Thus, exactly thus, in
all results of true inventive power, the whole harmony
of the thing done seems as if it had been wrought
by the most exquisite rules. But to him who did
it, it presented itself so, and his will, and knowledge,
and personality, for the moment went for nothing;
he became simply a scribe, and wrote what he heard
and saw.
And all efforts to do things of a similar kind by
rule or by thought, and all efforts to mend or re-
arrange the first order of the vision, are not inven-
tive; on the contrary, they ignore and deny in-
vention. If any man, seeing certain forms laid on
the canvass, does by his reasoning power determine
that certain changes wrought in them would mend
or enforce them, that is not only uninventive, but
contrary to invention, which must be the involun-
tary occurrence of certain forms or fancies to the
mind in the order they are* to be portrayed. Thus
the knowing' of rules and the exertion of judgment
have a tendency to check andf confuse the fancy in
its flow; so that it will follow, that, in exact pro-
portion as a master knows anything about rules of
right and wrong, he is likely to be uninventive; and,
in exact proportion as he holds higher rank and has
nobler inventive power, he will know less of rules;
not despising them, but simply feeling that between
mm and them there is nothing in common — that
dreams cannot be ruled — ^that as they come, so they
must be caught, and they cannot be caught in any
II. NATURALIST
CHAP. VIl]
other shape than that they come in : and that he
might as well attempt to rule a rainbow into recti-
tude, or cut notches in a moth’s wings to hold it by,
as in any wise attempt to modify, by rule, the forms
of the involuntary vision.
§ 11. And this, which by reason we have thus
anticipated, is in reality universally so. There is no
exception. The great men never know how or why
they do things. They have no rules; cannot com-
prehend the nature of rules; — do not, usually, even
know, in what they do, what is best or what is
worst: to them it is all ‘the same: something they
cannot help saying or doing, — one piece of it as good
as another, and none of it (it seems to them) worth
much. The moment any man begins to talk about
rules, in whatsoever art, you may know him for a
second-rate man; and, if he talks about them much,
he is a third-rate, or not an artist at all. To this
rule there is no exception in any art; but it is per-
haps better to be illustrated in the art of music than
in that of painting. I fell by chance the other day
upon a work of De Stendhal’s, Vies de Haydn, de
Mozart, et de Metastase, fuller of common sense than
any book I ever read on the arts; though I see, by
the slight references made occasionally to painting,
that the author’s knowledge therein is warped and
limited by the elements of general teaching in the
schools around him; and I have not yet, therefore,
looked at what he has separately written on painting.
But one or two passagdfe out of this book on music
are closely to our present purpose ; •
Counterpoint is related to mathematics : a fool,
with patience, becomes a respectable savant in that;
but for the part of genius, melody, it has no rules.
No art is so utterly deprived of precepts for the pro-
duction of the beautiful. So much the better for it
and for us. Cimarosa, when first at Prague his air
was executed, Pria che spunti in ciel 1 ’Aurora, never
heard the pedants say to him, Your air is fine, be-
cause you have followed such and such a rule estab-
lished by Pergolese in such an one of his airs; but
li OF THE TRUE IDEAL [part iv
it would be finer still if you had conformed yourself
to such another rule from which Galluppi never
deviated.
Yes ; ‘ so much the better for it, and for us ’ ; but
I trust the time will soon come when melody in
painting will be understood, no less than in music,
and when people will find that, there also, the great
melodists have no rules, and cannot have any, and
that there are in this, as in sound, ‘ no precepts for
the production of the beautiful.’
§ 12. Again : ‘ Behold, my friend, an example of
that simple way of answering which embarrasses
much. One asked him (Haydn) the reason for a
harmony-^for a passage’s being assigned to one in-
strument rather than another ; but all he ever
answered was, “ I have done it, because it does
well Farther on. Do Stendhal relates an anecdote
of Haydn ; I believe one well known, but so much
to our purpose that I repeat it. Haydn had agreed
to give some lessons in counterpoint to an English
nobleman. ‘ “ For our first lesson ”, said the pupil,
already learned in the art — drawing at the same time
a quatuor of Haydn’s from his pocket, ” for our
first lesson may we examine this quatuor; and will
you tell me the reasons of certain modulations, which
I cannot entirely approve because they are contrary
to the principles?” Haydn, a little surprised, de-
clared himself ready to answer. The nobleman
began; and at the very first measures found matter
for objection. Haydn, who invented habitually, and
who was th^. contrary of a pedant, found himself
much embarrassed, and answered always, ” I have
done that because it has a good effect. I put that
passage there because it does well.” The English-
man, who judged that these answers proved nothing,
recommenced his proofs, and demonstrated to him,
by very good reasons, that his quatuor was good for
nothing. ‘‘ But, my lord, arrange this quatuor then
to your fancy — ^play it so, and you will see which of
the two ways is the best.” ” But why is yours the
best which is contrary to the rules?” ” Because it
CHAP, vii] II. NATURALIST 95
is the pleasantest.” The nobleman replied. Haydn
at last lost patience, and said, ” I see, my lord, it is
you who have the goodness to give lessons to me, and
truly I am forced to confess to you that I do not
deserve the honour.” The partizan of the rules
departed, still astonished that in following the rules
to the letter one cannot infallibly produce a Matri-
monio Segreto.*
This anecdote, whether in all points true or not, is
in its tendency most instructive, except only in that it
makes one false inference or admission, namely, that
a good composition can be contrary to the rules.
It may be contrary to certain principles, supposed
in ignorance to be general; but every great com-
position is in perfect harmony with all true rules, and
involves thousands too delicate for ear, or eye, or
thought, to trace; still it is possible to reason, with
infinite pleasure and profit, about these principles,
when the thing is once done; only, all our reasoning
will not enable any one to do another thing like it,
because all reasoning falls infinitely short of the
divine instinct. Thus we may reason wisely over the
way a bee builds its comb, and be profited by find-
ing out certain things about the angles of it. But
the bee knows nothing about those mattters. It
builds its comb in a far more inevitable way. And,
from a bee to Paul Veronese, all master-workers
work with this awful, this inspired unconsciousness.
§ 13. I said just now that there was no exception
to this law, that the grmt men never knew how or
why they did things. It is, of course^ only with
caution that such a broad statement should be made ;
but I have seen much of different kinds of artists, and
I have always found the knowledge of, and attention
to, rules so accurately in the inverse ratio to the
power of the painter, that I have myself no doubt
that the law is constant, and that men’s smallness
may be trigonometrically estimated by the attention
which, in their work, they pay to principles, especi-
ally principles of composition. The general way in
which the great men speak is of ‘‘ trying to do ’ this
OF THE TRUE IDEAL [paet iv
or that, just as a child would tell of something he
had seen and could not utter. Thus, in speaking of
the drawing of which I have given an etching farther
on (a scene on the St Gothard i). Turner asked if I
had been to see ‘ that litter of stones which I endeav-
oured to represent and William Hunt, when I
aeked him one day as he was painting, why he put
on such and such a colour, answered, ‘ I don’t know;
I am just aiming at it and Turner, and he, and
all the other men I have known who could paint,
always spoke and speak in the same way; not in
any selfish restraint of their knowledge, but in pure
simplicity. While all the men whom I know, who
cannot paint, are ready with admirable reasons for
everything they have done; and can show, in the
most conclusive way, that Turner is wrong, and how
ho might be improved.
§ 14. And this is the reason for the somewhat
singular, but very palpable truth that the Chinese,
and Indians, and othei* semi-civilized nations, can
colour better than we do, and that an Indian shawl
and China vase are still, in invention of colour,
inimitable by us. It is their glorious ignorance of
all rules that does it; the pure and true instincts
have play, and do their work — instincts so subtle,
that the least warping or compression breaks or
blunts them; and the moment we begin teaching
people any rules about colour, and make them do
this or that, we crush the instinct, generally for ever.
Hence, hitherto, it has been an actual necessity, in
order to obtain power of colouring, that a nation
should be nalf-savage : everybody could colour in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ; but we were
ruled and legalized into grey in the fifteenth; only
a little salt simplicity of their sea natures at Venice
still keeping their precious, shell-fishy purpleness and
power; and now that is gone; and nobody can colour
anywhere, except the Hindoos and Chinese : but that
need not be so, and will not be so long; for, in a
little while, people will find out their mistake, and
1 See Plate XXI, in Yol. lY, Chap. III.
97
CHAP, vii] II. NATURALIST
give up talking about rules of colour, and then every-
body will colour again, as easily as they now talk.
§ 15. Such, then, being the generally passive or
instinctive character of right invention, it may be
asked how these unmanageable instincts are to be
rendered practically serviceable in historical or
poetical painting, — especially historical, in which
given facts are to be represented. Simply by the
sense and self-control of the whole man ; not by
control of the particular fancy or vision. He who
habituates himself, in his daily life, to seek for the
stern facts in whatever he hears or sees, will have
these facts again brought before him by the involun-
tary imaginative power in their noblest associations;
and he who seeks for frivolities and fallacies, will
have frivolities and fallacies again presented to him
in his dreams. Thus if, in reading history for the
purpose of painting from it, the painter severely
seeks for the accurate circumstances of every event;
as, for instance, determining the exact spot of ground
on which his hero fell, the way he must have been
looking at the moment, the height the sun was at
(by the hour of the day), and the way in which the
light must have fallen upon his face, the actual num-
ber and individuality of the persons by him at the
moment, and such other veritable details, ascertain-
ing and dwelling upon them without the slightest
care for any desirableness or poetic propriety in
them, but for their o\^ truth’s sake; then these
truths will afterwards rise up and fojjpa the body
of his imaginative vision, perfected and united as.
his inspiration may teach. But if, in reading the'
history, he does not regard these facts, but thinks
only how it might all most prettily, and properly,,
and impressively have happened, then there is no-
thing but prettiness and propriety to form the body
of his future imagination, and his whole ideal be-
comes false. So, in the higher or expressive part
of the work, the whole virtue of it depends on his
being able to quit his own personality, and enter-
successively into the hearts and thoughts of eacl^
M. P., III. H
p OF THE TRUE IDEAL [part iv
person; and in all this he is still passive in gather-
ing the truth he is passive, not determining what
the truth to be gathered shall be; and in the after
vision he is passive, not determining, but as his
dreams will have it, what the truth to be repre-
sented shall be; only according to his own noble-
neos is his power of entering into the hearts of noble
persons, and the general character of his dream of
them
§ 16. It follows from all this, evidently, that a
great idealist never can be egotistic. The whole of
his power depends upon his losing sight and feeling
of his own existence, and becoming a mere witness
and mirror of truth, and a scribe of visions — always
passive in sight, passive in utterance — lamenting con-
tinually that he cannot completely reflect nor clearly
utter all he has seen. Not by any means a proud
state for a man to be in. But the man who has no
invention is always setting things in order, and
putting the world to lights, and mending, and
beautifying, and pluming himself on his doings as
supreme in all ways.
§ 17. There is still the question open. What are
the principal directions in which this ideal faculty
is to exercise itself most usefully for mankind?
This question, however, is not to the purpose of
our present work, which respects landscape-painting
only; it must be one of those left open to the reader’s
thoughts, and for future inquiry in another place.
One or two essential points I briefly notice.
In Chap. IV, § 5, it was sahj, that one of the first
functions of imagination was traversing the scenes
of history, and forcing the facts to become again
visible. But there is so little of such force in written
history, that it is no marvel there should be none
hitherto in painting. There does not exist, as far
as I know, in the world a single example of a good
historical picture (that is to say, of one which, allow-
1 The reader should, of course, refer for fuller details on this
subject to the chapters on Inclination in Vol. II, of which I
only glancing now at the practical results.
II. NATURALIST
CHAP. VIl]
90
ing for necessary dimness in art as compared with
nature, yet answers nearly the same ends in our
min ds as the sight of the real event would have
answered) ; the reason being, the universal endeavour
to get effects instead of facts, already shown as the
root of false idealism. True historical ideal, founded
on sense, correctness of knowledge, and purpose of
usefulness, does not yet exist; the production of it
is a task which the closing nineteenth century may
propose to itself.
§ 18. Another point is to be observed. I do not,
as the reader may have lately perceived, insist on
the distinction between historical and poetical paint-
ing, because, as noted in the 22nd paragraph of the
third chapter, all great painting must be both.
Nevertheless, a certain distinction must generally
exist between men who, like Horace Vemet, David,
or Domenico Tintoret, would employ themselves in
painting, more or less graphically, the outward
verities of passing events — battles, councils, &c. —
of their day (who, supposing them to work worthily
of their mission, would become, properly so called,
historical or narrative painters) ; and men who
sought, in scenes of perhaps less outward importance,
‘ noble grounds for noble emotion — who would be,
in a certain separate sense, poetical painters, some
of them taking for subjects events which had actually
happened, and others themes from the poets; or,
better still, becoming poets themselves in the entire
sense, and inventing th« story as they painted it.
Painting seems to me only just to be beginning, in
this sense also, to take its proper position beside
literature, and the pictures of the ‘ Awakening Con-
science * Huguenot and such others, to be the
first fruits of its new effort.
§ 19. Finally, as far as I can observe, it is a con-
stant law that the greatest men, whether poets or
historians, live entirely in their own age, and that
the greatest fruits of their work are gathered out
of their own age. Dante paints Italy in the thirteenth
century; Chaucer, England in the fourteenth;
ioo OF THE TRUE IDEAL [part iv
Masacfcio, Florence in the fifteenth; Tintoret, Venice
in the sixteenth; — all of them utterly regardless of
anachronism and minor error of every kind, but
getting always vital truth out of the vital present.
§ 20. If it be said that Shakspeare wrote perfect
historical plays on subjects belonging to the preced-
ing centuries, I answer, that they are perfect plays
jUiSt because there is no care about centuries in them,
but a life which all men recognize for the human
life of all time; and this it is, not because Shakspeare
sought to give universal truth, but because, painting
honestly and completely from the men about him,
he painted that human nature which is, indeed, con-
stant enough — a rogue in the fifteenth century being,
at heart, what a rogue is in the nineteenth and was
in the twelfth; and an honest or a knightly man
being, in like manner, very similar to other such at
any other time. And the work of these great ideal-
ists is, therefore, always universal; not because it
is not portrait, but because it is complete portrait
down to the heart, which is the same in all ages :
and the work of the mean idealists is not universal,
not because it is portrait, but because it is half
portrait — of the outside, the manners and the dress,
not of the heart. Thus Tintoret and Shakspeare
paint, both of them, simply Venetian and English
nature as they saw it in their time, down to the
root; and it does for all time; but as for any care
to cast themselves into the particular ways and tones
of thought, or custom, of past time in their historical
work, you ij^ill find it in neither of them, nor in any
other perfectly great man that I know of.
§ 21. If there had been no vital truth in their
present, it is hard to say what these men could have
done. I suppose, primarily, they would not have
existed; that they, and the matter they have to treat
of, are given together, and that the strength of the
nation and its historians correlatively rise and fall —
Hemdotus springing out of the dust of Marathon.
It is also hard to say how far our better general
acquaintance with minor details of past history may
101
cHAP.viii] III, GROTESQUE
make us able to turn the shadow on the imaginative
dial backwards, and naturally to ll've, and even live
strongly if we choose, in past periods; but this main
truth will always be unshaken, that the only historical
painting deserving the name is portraiture of our
own living men and our own passing times and that
all efforts to summon up the events of bygone periods,
though often useful and tquching, must come under
an inferior class of poetical painting; nor will it, I
believe, ever be much followed as their main work
by the strongest men, but only by the weaker and
comparatively sentimental (rather than imaginative)
groups. This marvellous hrst half of the nineteenth
century has in this matter, as in nearly all others,
been making a double blunder. It has, under the
name of improvement, done all it could to efface
THE RECORDS which departed ages have left of them-
selves, while it has declared the forgery of false
RECORDS of these same ages to be the great work of
its historical painters 1 I trust that in a few years
more we shall come somewhat to our senses in the
matter, and begin to perceive that our duty is to
preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and
to say for ourselves also what shall be true for the
future. Let us strive, with just veneration for that
future, first to do what is worthy to be spoken, and
then to speak it faithfully; and, with veneration for
the past, recognize that it is indeed in the power of
love to preserve the mom^ent, but not of incantation
to raise the dead.
CHAPTER VIII
OF THE TRUE IDEAL : THIRDLY, GROTESQUE
§ 1. I HAVE already, in the Stones of Venice , had
occasion to analyse, as far as I was able, the noble
nature and power of grotesque conception : I am
not sorry occasionally to refer the reader to that
1 See Edinburgh Lectures, lect. iv.
|p5 OF THE TRUE IDEAL [part iv
work, the fact being that it and this are parts of one
whole, divided merely as I had occasion to follow
out one or other of its branches; for I have always
considered architecture as an essential part of land-
scape; and I think the study of its best styles and
real meaning one of the necessary functions of the
landscape-painter; as, in like manner, the architect
cannot be a master-workman until all his designs
are guided by understanding of the wilder beauty of
pure nature. But, be this as it may, the discussion
of the grotesque element belonged most properly to
the essay on architecture, in which that element
must always find its fullest development.
§ 2. The Grotesque is in that chapter 1 divided
principally into three kinds :
(A) . Art arising from healthful but irrational play
of the imagination in times of rest.
(B) . Art arising from irregular and accidental con-
templation of terrible things; or evil in general.
(C) . Art arising from the confusion of the imagin-
ation by the presence of truths which it cannot wholly
grasp.
It is the central form of this art, arising from
contemplation of evil, which forms the link of con-
nection between it and the sensualist ideals, as
pointed out above in the second paragraph of the
sixth chapter, the fact being that the imagination,
when at play, is curiously like bad children, and
likes to play with fire : in its entirely serious moods
it dwells j)y preference on beautiful and sacred
images, but in its mocking qr playful moods it is
apt to jest, sometimes bitterly, with under-current
of sternest pathos, sometimes waywardly, sometimes
slightly and wickedly, with death and sin; hence
an enormous mass of grotesque art, some most noble
and useful, as Holbein’s Dance of Death, and Albert
Diirer’s Knight and Deaths, going down gradually
through various conditions of less and less seriousness
into an art whose only end is that of ^ mere excite-
1 On the Grotesque Renaissance, vol. iii.
, 2 gee Appendix I, Vol. IV, ‘ Modem Grotesque.’
oHAP.vm] III. GROTESQUE M
ment, or amusement by terror, like a child making
mouths at another, more or less redeemed by the
degree of wit or fancy in the grimace it makes, as
in the demons of Teniers and such others; and,
lower still, in the demonology of the stage.
§ 3. The form arising from an entirely healthful
and open play of the imagination, as in Shakspeare’s
Ariel and Titania, and in Scott’s White Lady, is
comparatively rare. It hardly ever is free from some
slight taint of the inclination to evil; still more
rarely is it, when so free, natural to the mmd; for
the moment we begin to contemplate sinless beauty
we are apt to get serious; and moral fairy tales,
and such other innocent work, are hardly ever truly,
that is to say, naturally, imaginative; but for the
most part laborious inductions and compositions.
The moment any real vitality enters them, they are
nearly sure to become satirical, or slightly gloomy,
and so connect themselves with the evil-enjoying
branch.
§ 4. The third form of the Grotesque is a thor-
oughly noble one. It is that which arises out of
the use or fancy of tangible signs to set forth an
otherwise less expressible truth; including nearly
the whole range of symbolical and allegorical art
and poetry. Its nobleness has been sufficiently in-
sisted upon in the place before referred to. (Chapter
on ‘ Grotesque Renaissance *, §§ lxiii, lxiv, &c.)
Of its practical use, especially in painting, deeply
despised among us, be(fause grossly misunderstood,
a few words must be added here. •
A fine grotesque is the expression, in a moment,
by a series of symbols thrown together in bold and
fearless connection, of truths which it would have
taken a long time to express in any verbal way, and
of which the connection is left for the beholder to
work out for himself; the gaps, left or overleaped
by the haste of the imagination, forming the gro-
tesque character.
§ 6. For instance, Spenser desires to tell us, (1)
that envy is the most untamable and unappeasable
,%m OF THE TRUE IDEAL [part nr
of tho passions, not to be soothed by any kindness;
(2) that with continual labour it invents evil thoughts
out of its own heart; (3) that even in this, its power
of doing harm is partly hindered by the decaying
and corrupting nature of the evil it lives in; (4) that
it looks every way, and that whatever it sees is
altered and discoloured by its own nature ; (5) which
distsolouring, however, is to it a veil, or disgraceful
dress, in the sight of others; (6) and that it never
is free from the most bitter suffering, (7) which
cramps all its acts and movements, enfolding and
crushing it while it torments. All this it has re-
quired a somewhat long and languid sentence for me
to say in unsymbolical terms — not, by the way, that
they are unsymbolical altogether, for I have been
forced, whether I would or not, to use some figur-
ative words; but even with this help the sentence
is long and tiresome, and does not with any vigour
represent the truth. It would take some prolonged
enforcement of each sentence to make it felt, in
ordinary ways of talking. But Spenser puts it all
into a grotesque, and it is done shortly and at once,
so that we feel it fully, and see it, and never forget
it. I have numbered above the statements which
had to be made. I now number them with the same
numbers, as they occur in the several pieces of the
grotesque :
And next to him malicious Envy rode
(1) Upon a ravenous wolfe, and (2, 3) still did chaw
Between his cankred i teeth a venemous todo,
That all the poison ran about his jaw.
(4, 5) All in a kirtle of discoloivd say
He clothed was, y-paynted full of eies ;
(6) And in his bosome secretly there lay
An hatefull snake, the which his taile uptyes
(7) In many folds, and mortall sting implyes.
There is the whole thing in nine lines; or, rather,
in one image, which will hardly occupy any room at
all on the mind’s shelves, but can be lifted out,
whole, whenever we want it. All noble grotesques
1 Oankred — because he cannot then bite hard.
CHAP, vm] III. GROTESQUE ibs
are concentrations of this kind, and the noblest con-
vey truths which nothing else could convey; and
not only so, but convey thenri, in minor cases with
a delightfulnoss, in the higher instances with an
awfulness, which no mere utterance of the symbolized
truth would have possessed, but which belongs to
the effort of the mind to unweave the riddle, or to
the sense it has of there being an infinite power and
meaning in the thing seen, beyond all that is appar-
ent therein, giving the highest sublimity even to the
most trivial object so presented and so contemplated.
‘ Jeremiah, what seest thou ? ’
‘ I see a seething pot, and the face thereof is toward the north,
Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the
inhabitants of the land.*
And thus in all ages and among all nations,
grotesque idealism has been the element through
which the most appalling and eventful truth has
been wisely conveyed, from the most sublime words
of true Revelation, to the ^t* hy Tjfxloyos Bacn\c6st
&c., of the oracles, and the more or less doubtful
teaching of dreams ; and so down to ordinary poetry.
No element of imagination has a wider range, a more
magnificent use, or so colossal a grasp of sacred
truth.
§ 6. How, then, is this noble power best to be
employed in the art of painting?
We hear it not unfrequently asserted that sym-
bolism or personification should not be introduced
in painting at all. Such assertions |re in their
grounds unintelligible, and in their substance absurd.
Whatever is in words described as visible, may with
all logical fitness i be rendered so by colours, and
not only is this a legitimate branch of ideal art,
but I believe there is hardly any other so widely
useful and instructive ; and I heartily wish that
every great allegory which the poets ever invented
were powerfully put on canvass, and easily accessible
1 Though, perhaps, only in a subordinate degree. See farther
on, § 8.
OF THE TRUE IDEAL [part tv
by all men, and that our artists were perpetually
exciting themselves to invent more. And as far as
authority bears on the question, the simple fact is
that allegorical painting has been the delight of the
greatest men and of the wisest multitudes, from the
beginning of art, and will be till art expires. Or-
cagpa’s Triumph of Death; Simon Memmi’s frescoes
in the Spanish Chapel; Giotto’s principal works at
Assisi, and partly at the Arena; Michael Angelo’s
two best statues, the Night and Day; Albert Dhrer’s
noble Melancholy, and hundreds more of his best
works; a full third, I should think, of the works of
Tintoret and Veronese, and nearly as large a portion
of those of Raphael and Rubens, are entirely sym-
bolical or personifiant; and, except in the case of
the last-named painter, are always among the most
interesting works the painters executed. The
greater and more thoughtful the artists, the more
they delight in symbolism, and the more fearlessly
they employ it. Dead symbolism, second-hand sym-
bolism, pointless symbolism, are indeed objectionable
enough; but so are most other things that are dead,
second-hand, and pointless. It is also true that both
symbolism and personification are somewhat more
apt than most things to have their edges taken ofE
by too much handling; and what with our modem
Fames, Justices, and various metaphorical ideals,
largely used for signs and other such purposes, there
is some excuse for our not well knowing what the
real power of personificatioil' is. But that power is
gigantic an^. inexhaustible, and ever to be grasped
with peculiar joy by the painter, because it permits
him to introduce picturesque elements and flights of
fancy into his work, which otherwise would be
utterly inadmissible; to bring the wild beasts of the
desert into the room of state, fill the air with inha-
bitants as well as the earth, and render the least
(visibly) interesting incidents themes for the most
thrilling drama. Even Tintoret might sometimes
have been hard put to it, when he had to fill a large
panel in the Ducal Palace with the portrait of a
CHAP, vni] III. GROTESQUE 107
nowise interesting Doge, unless he had been able to
lay a winged lion beside him, ten feet long from the
nose to the tail, asleep upon the Turkey carpet;
and Rubens could certainly have made his flatteries
of Mary of Medicis palatable to no one but herself,
without the help of rosy-cheeked goddesses of
abundance, and seven-headed hydras of rebellion.
§ 7. For observe, not only does the introduction
of these imaginary beings permit greater fantasticism
of incident f but also infinite fantasticism of treat-
ment; and, I believe, so far from the pursuit of the
false ideal having in any wise exhausted the realms
of fantastic imagination, those realms have hardly
yet been entered, and that a universe of noble dream-
land lies before us, yet to be conquered. For, hither-
to, when fantastic creatures have been introduced,
either the masters have been so realistic in temper
that they made the spirits as substantial as their
figures of flesh and blood, as Rubens, and, for the
most part, Tintoret; or else they have been weak
and unpractised in realization, and have painted
transparent or cloudy spirits because they had no
power of painting grand ones. But if a really great
painter, thorougnly capable of giving substantial
truth, and master of the elements of pictorial effect
which have been developed by modern art, would
solemnly, and yet fearlessly, cast his fancy free in
the spiritual world, and faithfully follow out such
masters of that world ^s Dante and Spenser, there
seems no limit to the splendour of thought which
painting might express. Consider, for instance, how
the ordinary personifications of Charity oscillate be-
tween the mere nurse of many children, of Reynolds,
and the somewhat painfully conceived figure with
flames issuing from the heart, of Giotto; and how
much more significance might be given to the repre-
sentation of Love, by amplifying with tenderness the
thought of Dante, ‘ Tanta rossa, che a pena fora
dentro al foco nota ’ that is to say, by representing
^ So red, that in the midst of the fire she could hardly have
been seen.
^ i# OF THE TRUE IDEAL [paet iv
the loTelxness of her face and form as all flushed
with glow of crimson light, and, as she descended
through heaven, all its clouds coloured by her
presence fils they are by sunset. In the hands of a
feeble painter, such an attempt would end in mere
caricature; but suppose it taken up by Correggio,
adding to his power of flesh-painting the (not incon-
sistent) feeling of Angelico in design, and a portion
of Turner’s knowledge of the clouds. There is no-
thing impossible in such a conjunction as this.
Correggio,^ trained in another school, might have
even himself shown some such extent of grasp; and
in Turner’s picture of the Dragon of the Hesperides,
Jason, vignette to Voyage of Columbus (‘ Slowly
along the evening sky they went ’), and such others,
as well as in many of the works of Watts and
Rossetti, is already visible, as I trust, the dawn of
a new era of art, in a true unison of the grotesque
with the realistic power.
§ 8. There is, however, unquestionably, a severe
limit, in the case of all inferior masters, to the degree
in which they may venture to realize grotesque con-
ception, and partly, also, a limit in the nature of
the thing itself, there being many grotesque ideas
which may be with safety suggested dimly by words
or slight lines, but which will hardly bear being
painted into perfect definiteness. It is very diffi-
cult, in reasoning on this matter, to divest ourselves
of the prejudices which ha'^e been forced upon us
by the base grotesque of men like Bronzino, who,
having no true imagination, are apt, more than
others, to try by startling realism to enforce the
monstrosity that has no terror in itself. But it is
nevertheless true, that, unless in the hands of the
very greatest men, the grotesque seems better to
be expressed merely in line, or light and shade, or
mere abstract colour, so as to mark it for a thought
rather than a substantial fact. Even if Albert Diirer
had perfectly painted his Knight and Death, I ques-
tion if we should feel it so great a thought as we
do in the dark engraving. Blake, perfectly power-
CHAP, vni] III. GROTESQUE , 109
ful in the etched grotesque of the book of Job, fails
always more or less as soon as he adds colour; not
merely for want of power (his eye for colour being
naturally good), but because his subjects seem, in a
sort, insusceptible of completion; and the two in-
expressibly noble and pathetic woodcut grotesques
of Alfred RetheUs, Death the Avenger, and Death
the Friend, could not, I think, but with disadvan-
tage, be advanced into pictorial colour.
And what is thus doubtfully true of the pathetic
grotesque, is assuredly and always true of the jjest-
ing grotesque. So far as it expresses any transient
flash of . wit or satire, the less labour of line, or
colour, given to its expression the better; elaborate
jesting being always intensely painful.
§ 9. For these several reasons, it seems not only
permissible, but even desirable, that the art by which
the grotesque is expressed should be more or less
imperfect, and this seems a most beneficial ordin-
ance as respects the hum^n race in general. For the
grotesque being not only a most forceful instrument
of teaching, but a most natural manner of expres-
sion, springing as it does at once from any tendency
to playfulness in minds highly comprehensive of
truth; and being also one of the readiest ways in
which such satire or wit as may be possessed by
men of any inferior rank of mind can be for per-
petuity expressed, it becomes on all grounds desir-
able that what is suggested in times of play should
be rightly sayable withcput toil; and what occurs to
men of inferior power or knowledge. Buyable with-
out any high degree of skill. Hence it is an infinite
good to mankind when there is full acceptance of
the grotesque, slightly sketched or expressed; and,
if field for such expression be frankly granted, an
enormous mass of intellectual power is turned to
everlasting use, which, in this present century of
ours, evaporates in street gibing or vain revelling;
all the good wit and satire expiring in daily talk,
(like foam on wine), which in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries had a permitted and useful ex-
xio OF 3:HE TBUE [part iv
pressi<^ in the arts of 8Ci:4ptur© and illumination,
like foam fixed into chalcedony. It is with a view
(not the least important a»ion^ manj Others bearing
upon art) to the reopening of this greOt field of human
intelligence, long entirely closed, thot I am striving
to introduce Gothic architecture into daily domestic
use; and to revive the art of illumination i properly
sc. called; not the art of miniature-painting jn books,
or on vellum, which has ridiculously been confused
with it; but of making writing, simple writing, beau-
tiful to the eye, by investing it with the great chord
of perfect colour, blue, purple, scarlet, white, ahd
gold, and in that chord of colour, permittijhg the
continual play of the fancy of the writer in every
species of grotesque imagination, carefully exclud-
ing shadow; the distinctive difference between illu-
mination and painting proper, being, that illumination
admits no shadows, hut only gradations of pure
colour. And it is in this respect that illumination is
specially fitted for grotesque expression; for, when I
used the term ‘ pictorial dolour ’, just nCw, in spaak-
ing of the completion of the grotesque of Death the
Avenger, I meant to distinguish such colour from
the abstract, shadeless hues which are eminently
fitted for grotesque thought. The requirement,
respecting the slighter grotes(me, is only that it shall
be incompletely expressed. It may have light and
shade without colour (as in etching and sculpture),
or colour without light and shade (illumination),
but must not, except in the hands of the greatest
masters, have both. And for some conditions of the
playful grotesque, the abstract ^olour is a much more
delightful element of expression than the abstract
light and shade.
§ 10. Such being the manifold and precious uses
of the true grotesque, it only remains for us to note
carefully how it is to be distinguished from the false
and vicious grotesque which results from idleness,
instead of noble rest; from malice, instead of the
solemn contemplation of necessary evil; and from
general degradation of the human spirit, instead of
CHAP, vmj III. GROTESQUE ill
its subjection, or confusion, bv thoughts too
for it. It is easy for the reaaer to conceive h<3f
different the fruits of j;wo such different states of
mind must be; and yet* how like in many respects,
and apt to be mistake^j^ one for the other; how
the jest which springs from mere fatuity, and vacant
want of penetration or purpose, is everlastingly, in-
finitely, separated from, and yet may sometimes be
mistaken for, the bright, playful, fond, far-sighted
jest of Plato, or the bitter, purposeful, sorrowing
jest of Aristophanes; how, again, the horror which
springs from guilty love of foulness and sin, may
be often mistcien for the inevitable horror which a
great mind must sometimes feel in the full and
penetrative sense of their presence; how, finally, the
vague and foolish inconsistencies of undisciplined
dream or reverie may be mistaken for the compelled
inconsistencies of thoughts too great to be well sus-
tained, or clearly uttered. It is easy, I say, to under-
stand what a difference there must indeed be between
these; and yet how difficult it may be always to
define it, or lay down laws for the discovery of it,
except by the just instinct of minds set habitually
in all things to^iscern right from wrong.
§ 11. Neverfleless, one good and characteristic
instance may be of service in marking the leading
directions in which the contrast is discernible. On
Plate I, I have put, beside each other, a piece of
true grotesque, from the Lombard-Gothic, and of
false grotesque from cladlical (Roman) architecture.
They are both griffins ; the one on the left carries on
his back one of the main pillars of the porch of the
cathedral of Verona; the one on the right is on
the frieze of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina
at Rome, much celebrated by Renaissance and bad
modem architects.
In some respects, however, this classical griffin
deserves its reputation. It is exceedingly fine in lines
of composition, and, I believe (I have not examined
the original closely), very exquisite in execution.
For these reasons, it is all the better for our purpose.
112 OF THE TRUE IDEAL [part iv
I do not want to compare the worst false grotesque
with the best true, but rather, on the contrary, the
best false with the simplest true, in order to see
how the delicately wrought lie fails in the presence
of the rough truth; for rough truth in the present
case it is, the Lombard sculpture being altogether
untoward and imperfect in execution
' § 12. ‘Well, but ’, the reader says, ‘ what do you
mean by calling either of them true? There never
were such beasts in the world as either of these?’
No, never : but the difference is, that the Lombard
workman did really see a griffin in his imagination,
and carved it from the life, meaning to declare to
all ages that ho had verily seen with his immortal
eyes such a griffin as that; but the classical work-
man never saw a griffin at all, nor anything else;
but put the whole thing together by line and rule.
§ 13. ‘ How do you know that?’
Very easily. Look at the two, and think over
them. You know a griffin is a beast composed of
lion and eagle. The classical workman set himself
to fit these together in the most ornamental way
possible. He accordingly carves a sufficiently satis-
factory lion’s body, then attaches very gracefully
cut wings to the sides : then, because he cannot get
the eagle’s head on the broad lion’s shoulders, fits
the two together by something like a horse’s neck
(some griffins being wholly composed of horse and
eagle), then, finding the horse’s neck look weak and
unformidable, he strengthens it by a series of bosses,
like vertebrae, in front, and by a series of spiny
cusps, instead of a mane, on the ridge; next, not
to lose the whole leonine character about the neck,
he gives a remnant of the lion’s beard, turned into
a sort of griffin’s whisker, and nicely curled and
pointed; then an eye, probably meant to look grand
and abstracted, and therefore neither lion’s nor
’ If there be any inaccuracy in the right-hand griffin, I am
sorry, but am not answerable for it, as the plate has been faith-
fully reduced from a large French lithograph, the best I could
find. The other is from a sketch of my own.
CHAP, vni] III. GROTESQUE v ’U3
eagle’s; and, finally, an eagle’s beak, very sufficiently
studied from a real one. The whole head being,
it seems to him, still somewhat wanting in weight
and power, he brings forward the right wing be-
hind it, so as to enclose it with a bro^ line. This
is the finest thing in the composition, and very
masterly, both in thought, and in choice of the
exactly right point where the lines of wing and beak
should intersect (and it may be noticed in passing,
that all men, who can compose at all, have this
habit of encompassing or governing broken lines with
broad ones, wherever it is possible, of which we shall
see many instances hereafter). The whole griffin,
thus gracefully composed, being, nevertheless, when
all is done, a very composed griffin, is set to very
quiet work, and raising his left foot, to balance his
right wing, sets it on the tendril of a flower so
lightly as not even to bend it down, though, in order
to reach it, his left leg is made half as long again
as his right.
§ 14. We may be pretty sure, if the carver had
ever seen a griffin, he would have reported of him
as doing something else than that with his feet. Let
us see what the Lombardic workman saw him doing.
Remember, first, the griffin, though part lion and
part eagle, has the united povyer of both. He is not
merely a bit of lion and a bit of eagle, but whole
lion, incorporate with whole eagle. So when we
really see one, we may be quite sure we shall not
find him wanting in anything necessary to the might
either of beast or bird.
Well, among things essential to the might of a
lion, perhaps, on the whole, the most essential are
his teeth. He could get on pretty well even with-
out his claws, usually striking his prey down with a
blow, woundless; but he could by no means get
on without his teeth. Accordingly, we see that the
real or Lombardic griffin has the carnivorous teeth
bare to the root, and the peculiar hanging of the
jaw at the back, which marks the flexible and gaping
mouth of the devouring tribes.
M. P., III.
I
0L4 OF THE TRUE IDEAL [? art iv
Again; among things essential to the might of an
©agle^ next to his wings (which are of course promin-
ent in both examples), are his claws. It is no use
his being able to tear anything with his beak, if
he cannot first hold it in his claws; he has com-
paratively no leonine power, of striking with his feet,
but a magnificent power of grip with them. Accord-
in^ly, we see that the real griffin, while his feet are
heavy enough to strike like a lion’s, has them also
extended far enough to give them the eagle’s grip
with the back claw; and has, moreover, some of the
bird-like wrinkled skin over the whole foot, marking
this binding power the more; and that he has be-
sides verily got something to hold with his feet,
other than a flower, of which more presently.
§ 15. Now observe, the Lombardic workman did not
do all this because he had thought it out, as you and
I are doing together; he never thought a bit about
it. He simply saw the beast; saw it as plainly as
you see the writing on this page, and of course could
not be wrong in anything he told us of it.
Well, what more does he tell us? Another thing,
remember, essential to an eagle is that it should
fly fast. It is no use its having wings at all if it is
to be impeded in the use of them. Now it would
be difficult to impede him more thoroughly than by
giving him two cocked ears to catch the wind.
Look, again, at the two beasts. You see the false
griffin has them so set, and, consequently, as he
flew, there would be a coiitinual humming of the
wind on eaph side of his head, and he would have
an infallible earache when he got home. But the
real griffin has his ears flat to his head, and all the
hair of them blown back, even to a point, by his
fast flying, and the aperture is downwards, that he
may hear anything going on upon the earth, where
his prey is. In the false griffin the aperture is
upwards.
§ 16. Well, what more? As he is made up of the
natures of lion and eagle, we may be very certain
that a real griffin is, on the whole, fond of eating,
116
CHAP, viii] III. GR0TES<5tJE
and that his throat will look as if he occasionally
took father large pieces, besides being flexible enough
to let him bend and stretch his head in every direc-
tion as he flies.
Look again at the two beasts. You see the false
one has got those bosses upon his neck like vertebra ,
which must be infinitely in his way when he is swal-
lowing, and which are evidently inseparable, so that
he cannot stretch his neck any more than a horse.
But the real griffin is ail loose about the neck, evi-
dently being able to make it almost as much longer
as he likes; to stretch and bend it anywhere, and
swallow anything, besides having some of the grand
strength of the bull’s dewlap in it when at rest.
§ 17. What more? Having both lion and eagle
in him, it is probable that the real griffin will have
an infinite look of repose as well as power of activity.
One of the notablest things about a lion is his
magnificent indolence, his look of utter disdain of
trouble when there is no occasion for it; as, also,
one of the notablest things about an eagle is his
look of inevitable vigilance, even when quietest.
Look again at the two beasts. You see the false
griffin is quite sleepy and dead in the eye, thus con-
tradicting his ess^gle’s nature, but is putting himself
to a great deal of unnecessary trouble with nis paws,
holding one in a most painful position merely to
touch a flower, and bearing the whole weight of his
body on the other, thj^s contradicting his lion’s
nature.
But the real griffin is primarily, with his eagle’s
nature, wide awake; evidently quite ready for what-
ever may happen; and with his lion’s nature, laid all
his length on his belly, prone and ponderous; his
two paws as simply put out before him as a drowsy
R ’s on a drawingroom hearth-rug; not but that
8 got something to do with them, worthy of
such paws; but he takes not one whit more trouble
about it than is absolutely necessary. He has merely
got a poisonous winged dragon to hold, and for such
a little matter as that, he may as well do it lying
m OF THE TRUE IDEAL [part iv
down and at his ease, looking out at the same time
for any other piece of work in his way. He takes
the dragon by the middle, one paw under the wing,
another above, gathers him up into a knot, puts two
or three of his claws well into his back, crashing
through the scales of it and wrinkling all the flesh
Up from the wound, flattens him down against the
pound, and so lets him do what he lilces. The
dragon tries to bite him, but can only bring his head
round far enough to get hold of his own wing, which
he bites in agony instead; flapping the griffin’s dew-
lap with it, and wriggling his tail up against the
griffin’s throat; the griffin being, as to these minor
proceedings, entirely indifferent, sure that the
dragon’s body cannot drag itself one hair’s breadth
off those ghastly claws, and that its head can do no
harm but to itself.
§ 18. Now observe how in all this, through every
separate part and action of the creature, the imagin-
ation is always right. It evidently cannot err; it
meets every one of our requirements respecting the
griffin as simply as if it were gathering up the bones
of the real creature out of some ancient rock. It
does not itself know or care, any more than the
peasant labouring with his spade and axe, what is
wanted to meet our theories or fancies. It knows
simply what is there, and brings out the positive
creature, errorless, unquestionable. So it is through-
out art, and in all that the imagination does; if
anything be wrong it is no’t the imagination’s fault,
but some «inferior faculty’s, which would have its
foolish say in the matter, ^and meddled with the
imagination, and said, the bones ought to be put
together tail first, or upside down.
§ 19. This, however, we need not be amazed at,
because the very essence of the imagination is already
defined to be the seeing to the heart; and it is not
therefore wonderful that it should never err; but
it is wonderful, on the other hand, how the compos-
ing legalism does nothing else than err. One would
have thought that, by mere chance, in this or the
117
CHAP, viii] III. GROTESQUE
other element of griffin, the griffin-composer might
have struck out a truth; that he might have had
the luck to set the ears back, or to give some grasp
to the claw. But, no; from beginning to end it
is evidently impossible for him to be anything but
wrong; his whole soul is instinct with lies; no
veracity can come within hail of him; to him, all
regions of right and life are for ever closed.
§ 20. And another notable point is, that while the
imagination receives truth in this simple way, it is
all the while receiving statutes of composition also,
far more noble than those for the sake of which the
truth was lost by the legalist. The ornamental
lines in the classical griffin appear at first finer than
in the other; but they only appear so because they
are more commonplace and more palpable. The
subtlety of the sweeping and rolling curves in the
real griffin, the way they waver and change and
fold, down the neck, and along the wing, and in and
out among the serpent coils, is incomparably grander,
merely as grouping of ornamental line, than any-
thing in the other; nor is it fine as ornamental only,
but as massively useful, giving weight of stone
enough to answer the entire purpose of pedestal
sculpture. Note, especially, the insertion of the
three plumes of the dragon’s broken wing in the
outer angle, just under the large coil of his body;
this filling of the gap being one of the necessities,
not of the pedestal bl^ck merely, but a means of
getting mass and breadth, which all composers
desire more or less, but which they seMom so per-
fectly accomplish.
So that taking the truth first, the honest imagin-
ation gains everything; it has its griffinism, and
grace, and usefulness, ajl at once : but the false
composer, caring for nothing but himself and his
rules, loses everything — griffinism, grace, and all.
§ 21. I believe the reader will now sufficiently see
how the terms ‘ true ’ and ‘ false ’ are in the most
accurate sense attachable to the opposite branches of
what might appear at first, in both cases, the merest
Ill OF THE TRUE IDEAL [part iv
wildness of inconsistent reverie. But they are even
to be attached, in a deeper sense than that in which
we have hitherto used them, to these two composi-
tions. For the imagination hardly ever works in this
intense way, unencumbered by the inferior facul-
ties, unless it be under the influence of some solemn
purpose or sentiment. And to all the falseness and
all the verity of these two ideal creatures this farther
falsehood and verity have yet to be added, that the
classical griffin has, at least in this place, no other
intent than that of covering a level surface with
entertaining form; but the Lombardic griffin is a
profound expression of the most passionate sym-
bolism. Under its eagle’s wings are two wheels
which mark it as connected, in the mind of him who
wrought it, with the living creatures of the vision
of Ezekiel : ‘ When they went, the ^*heels went by
them, and whithersoever the spirit was to go, they
went, and the wheels were lifted up over against
them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in
the wheels.’ Thus signed, the winged shape be-
comes at once one of the acknowledged symbols of
the Divine power; and, in its unity of lion and eagle,
the workman of the middle ages always meant to
set forth the unity of the human and divine natures 2.
In this unity it bears up the pillars of the Church,
set for ever as the corner stone. And the faithful
and true imagination beholds it, in this unity, with
everlasting vigilance and calrp omnipotence, restrain
the seed of the serpent crushed upon the earth;
leaving the head of it free, o^y for a time^ that it
may inflict in its fury profounder destruction upon
itself — in this also full of deep meaning. The
Divine power does not slay the evil creature. It
wounds and restrains it onjy. . Its final and deadly
wound is inflicted by itself,
^ At the extremities of the wings — not seen in the plate.
* Compare the Vurgaiorio^ canto xxix, &c.
CHAP. IX]
OF FINISH
119
CHAPTER IX
OF FINISH
§ 1. I AM afraid the reader must be, by this time,
almost tired of hearing about truth. But I cannot
help this; the more I have examined the various
forms of art, and exercised myself in receiving their
differently intended impressions, the more I hSve
found this truthfulness a final test, and the only
test of lasting power; and, although our concern
in this part of our inquiry is, professedly, with the
beauty which blossoms out of truth, still I find my-
self compelled always to gather it by the stalk, not
by the petals. I cannot hold the beauty, nor be
sure of it for a moment, but by feeling for that strong
stem.
We have, in the preceding chapters, glanced
through the various operations of the imaginative
power of man ; with this almost painfully monotonous
result, that its greatness and honour were always
simply in proportion to the quantity of truth it
grasped. And now the question, left undetermined
some hundred pages back (Chap. II, § 6), recurs to
us in a simpler form than it could before. How far
is this true imagination to be truly represented?
How far should the pei^fect conception of Pallas be
so given as to look like Pallas herself, rather than
like the picture of Pallas?
§ 2. A question, this, at present of notable inter-
est, and demanding instant attention. For it seemed
to us, in reasoning about Dante’s views of art, that
he was, or might be, right in desiring realistic com-
pleteness; and yet, in what we have just seen of
the grotesque ideal, it seemed there w’as a certain
desirableness in incompleteness. And the schools of
art in Europe are, at this moment, set in two hostile
ranks, not nobly hostile, but spitefully and scorn-
fully; having for one of the main grounds of their
OF FINISH
120
[part IV
dispute the apparently simple question, how far a
picture may be carried forward in detail, or how
soon it may be considered as finished.
I purpose, therefore, in the present chapter, to
examine, as thoroughly as I can, the real significa-
tion of this word, Finish, as applied to art, and to
see if in this, as in other matters, our almost tire-
some test is not the only right one; whether there
be not a fallacious finish and a faithful finish, and
whether the dispute, which seems to be only about
completion and incompletion, has not therefore, at
the bottom of it, the old and deep grounds of fallacy
and fidelity.
§ 3. Observe, first, there are two great and separate
senses in which we call a thing finished, or well-
finished. One, which refers to the mere neatness
and completeness of the actual work, as we speak of
a well-finished knife-handle or ivory toy (as opposed
to ill-cut ones); and, secondly, a sense which refers
to the effect produced by the thing done, as we call
a picture well-finished if it is so full in its details,
as to produce the effect of reality on the spectator.
And, in England, we seem at present to value highly
the first sort of finish which belongs to workmanship,
in our manufactures and general doings of any kind,
but to despise totally the impressive finish which
belongs to the work; and therefore we like smooth
ivories better than rough ones — but careless scrawls
or daubs better than the iliost complete paintings.
Now, I bel^ve that we exactly reverse the fitness of
judgment in this matter, arfd that we ought, on
the contrary, to despise the finish of workmanship,
which is done for vanity’s sake, and to love the finish
of work, which is done for truth’s sake — that we
ought, in a word, to finish our ivory toys more
roughly, and our pictures more delicately.
Let us think over this matter.
§ 4. Perhaps one of the most remarkable points of
difference between the English and Continental
nations is in the degree of finish given to their
ordinary work. It is enough to cross from Dover to
CHAP. IX] OF FINISH 121
Calais to feel this difference; and to travel farther
only increases the sense of it. English windows for
the most part fit their sashes, and their woodwork
is neatly planed and smoothed : French windows
are larger, heavier, and framed with wood that looks
as if it had been cut to its shape with a hatchet;
they have curious and cumbrous fastenings, and can
only be forced asunder or together by some ingenuity
and effort, and even then not properly. So with
everything else — French, Italian, and German, and,
as far as I know, Continental. Foreign drawers do
not slide as well as ours; foreign knives do not cut
so well; foreign wheels do not turn so well; and
we commonly plume ourselves much upon this, be-
lieving that generally the English people do their
work better and more thoroughly, or as they say,
‘ turn it out of their hands in better style *, than
foreigners. I do not know how far this is really the
case. There may be a flimsy neatness, as well as a
substantial roughness; it does not necessarily follow
that the window which shuts easiest will last the
longest, or that the harness which glitters the most
is assuredly made of the toughest leather. I am
afraid, that if this peculiar character of finish in our
workmanship ever arose from a greater heartiness
and thoroughness in our ways of doing things, it does
so only now in the case of our best manufacturers;
and that a great deal of the work done in England,
however good in appearance, is but treacherous and
rotten in substance. Still, I think that there is really
in the English mind, for the most part, a stronger
desire to do things as well as they can be done, and
less inclination to put up with inferiorities or in-
sufficiencies, than in general characterize the temper
of foreigners. There is in this conclusion no ground
for national vanity; for though the desire to do
things as well as they can be done at first appears
like a virtue, it is certainly not so in all its forms.
On the contrary, it proceeds in nine cases out of ten
more from vanity than conscientiousness; and that,
moreover, often a weak vanity. I suppose that as
122
OF FINISH
[PAET ly
much finish is displayed in the fittings of the private
carriages of our young rich men as in any other de-
partment of English manufacture; and that our St
James’s Street cabs, dogcarts, and liveries are sin-
gularly perfect in their way. But the feeling with
which this perfection is insisted upon (however de-
sk able as a sign of energy of purpose) is not in
itself a peculiarly amiable or noble feeling; neither
is it an ignoble disposition which would induce a
country gentleman to put up with certain deficiencies
in the appearance of his country-made carriage. It
is true that such philosophy may degenerate into
negligence, and that much thought and long dis-
cussion would be needed before we could determine
satisfactorily the limiting lines between virtuous
contentment and faultful carelessness ; but at all
events we have no right at once to pronounce our-
selves the wisest people because we like to do all
things in the best way. There are many httle things
which to do admirably is to waste both time and
cost; and the real question is not so much whether
we have done a given thing as well as possible, as
whether we have turned a given quantity of labour
to the best account.
§ 5. Now, so far from the labour’s being turned
to good account which is given to our English
* finishing ’, I believe it to be usually destructive of
the best powers of our workmen’s minds. For it is
evident, in the first place, th^t there is almost always
a useful and a useless finish; the hammering and
welding which are necessary^ to produce a sword
blade of the best quality, are useful finishing; the
polish of its surface, useless i. In nearly all work
this distinction will, more or less, take place be-
tween substantial finish and apparent finish, or what
may be briefly characterized as ‘ Make ’ and * Polish
And so far as finish is bestowed for purposes of
‘ make I have nothing to say against it. Even the
1 With his Yemen sword for aid;
Ornament it carried none,
But the notches on the blade.
OF FINISH
123
CHAP. IX]
vanity which displays itself in giving strength to
our work is rather a virtue than a vice. But so far
as finish is bestowed for purposes of ‘ polish \ there
is much to be said against it; this first, and very
strongly, that the qualities aimed at in common
finishing, namely, smoothness, delicacy, or fineness,
cannot in reality exists in a degree worth admiring,
in anything done by human hands. Our best finish-
ing is but coarse and blundering work after all. We
may smooth and soften, and sharpen till we are
sick at heart; but take a good magnifying-glass to
our miracle of skill, and the invisible edge is a jagged
saw, and the silky thread a rugged cable, and the
soft surface a granite desert. Let all the ingenuity
and all the art of the human race be brought to bear
upon the attainment of the utmost possible finish,
and they could not do what is done in the foot of
a fly, or the film of a bubble. God alone can finish;
and the more intelligent the human mind becomes,
the more the infiniteness of interval is felt between
human and divine work in this respect. So then it
is not a little absurd to weary ourselves in struggling
towards a point which we never can reach, and to
exhaust our strength in vain endeavours to produce
qualities which exist inimitably and inexhaustibly
in the commonest things around us.
§ 6. But more than this : the fact is, that in multi-
tudes of instances, instead of gaining greater fine-
ness of finish by our wyk, we are only destroying
the fine finish of nature, and substituting coarseness
and imperfection. For instance, when a *ock of any
kind has lain for some time exposed to the weather.
Nature finishes it in her own way; first, she takes
wonderful pains about its forms, sculpturing it into
exquisite variety of dint and dimple, and rounding
or hollowing it into contours, which for fineness no
human hand can follow; then she colours it; and
every one of her touches of colour, instead of being
a powder mixed with oil, is a minute forest of living
trees, glorious in strength and beauty, and conceal-
ing wonders of structure, which in all probability are
1*^4
OF FINISH
[part IV
mysteries even to the eyes of angels. Man comes,
and digs up this finished and marvellous piece of
work, which in his ignorance he calls a ‘ rough
stone He proceeds to finish it in hia fashion,
that is, to split it in two, rend it into ragged blocks,
and, finally, to chisel its surface into a large number
of lumps and knobs, all equally shapeless, colourless,
deathful, and frightful And the block, thus dis-
figured, he calls ‘ finished and proceeds to build
therewith, and thinks himself great, forsooth, and
an intelligent animal. Whereas, all that he has
really done is, to destroy with utter ravage a piece
of divine art, which, under the laws appointed by
the Deity to regulate His work in this world, it must
take good twenty years to produce the like of again.
This he has destroyed ^ and has himself given in its
place a piece of work which needs no more intelli-
gence to do than a pholas has, or a worm, or the
spirit which throughout the world has authority over
rending, rottenness, and decay. I do not say that
stone must not be cut; it needs to be cut for certain
uses; only I say that the cutting it is not ‘ finish-
ing but wnfinishing, it; and that so far as the mere
fact of chiselling goes, the stone is ruined by the
human touch. It is with it as with the stones of the
Jewish altar : ‘ If thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou
hast polluted it ’. In like manner, a tree is a finished
thing. But a plank, though ever so polished, is not.
We need stones and plank^^ as we need food; but
we no more bestow an additional admirableness upon
stone in hdwing it, or upon ^ tree in sawing it, than
upon an animal in killing it,
§ 7. Well, but it will be said, there is certainly a
kind of finish in stone-cutting, and in every other
art, which ia meritorious, and which consists in
smoothing and refining as much as possible. Yes,
assuredly there is a meritorious finish. First, as it
has just been said, that which fits a thing for its
uses — as a stone to lie well in its place, or a cog
of an engine-wheel to play well on another; and,
1 See the base of the new Army and Navy Clubhouse.
CHAP. IX] OF FINISH 125
secondly,* a finish belonging properly to the arts;
but that finish does not consist in smoothing or
polishing, but in the completeness of the expression
of ideas ^ For in painting, there is precisely the same
difference between the ends proposed in finishing
that there is in manufacture. Some artists finish
for the finish sake; dot their pictures all over,
as in some kinds of miniature-painting (when a wash
of colour would have produced as good an effect) ; or
polish their pictures all over, making the execution
so delicate that the touch of the brush cannot be
seen, for the sake of the smoothness merely, and of
the credit they may thus get for great labour; which
kind of execution, seen in great perfection in many
works of the Dutch school, and in those of Carlo
Dolce, is that polished ‘ language ’ against which I
have spoken at length in various portions of the first
volume; nor is it possible to speak of it with too
great severity or contempt, where it has been made
an ultimate end.
But other artists finish for the impression’s sake,
not to show their skill, nor to produce a smooth
piece of work, but that they may, with each stroke,
render clearer the expression of knowledge. And
this sort of finish is not, properly speaking, so much
completing the picture as adding to it. It is not
that what is painted is more delicately done, but
that infinitely more is painted. This finish is always
noble, and, like all other noblest things, hardly ever
understood or appreciated. I must here endeavour,
more especially with respect to the state of quarrel
between the schools of living painters,® to illustrate
it thoroughly.
§ 8. In sketching the outline, suppose of the trunk
of a tree, as in Plate II, Fig. 1, it matters compara-
tively little whether the outline be given with a bold,
or a delicate line, so long as it is outline only. The
work is not more ‘ finished ’ in one case than in the
other ; it is only prepared for being seen at a greater
or less distance. The real refinement or finish of
the line depends, not on its thinness, but on its
12©^ OF FINISH [part iv
truly following the contours of the tree,* which it
conventionally represents; conventionally, I say,
because there is no such line rotind the tree, in
reality; and it is set down not as an imitation, but
a limitation of the form. But if we are to add
shade to it as in Fig. 2, the outline must instantly
be made proportionally delicate, not for the sake of
delicacy as such, but because the outline will how,
in many parts, stand not for limitation of form
merely, but for a portion of the shadow within that
form. Now, as a limitation it was true, but as a
shadow it would be false, for there is no line of black
shadow at the edge of the stem. It must, therefore,
be madb so delicate as not to detach itself from the rest
of the shadow where shadow exists, and only to be
seen in the light where limitation is still necessary.
Observe, then, the ‘ finish ’ of Fig. 2 as compared
with Fig. 1 consists, not in its greater delicacy, but
in the addition of a truth (shadow), and the removal,
in a great degree, of a conventionalism (outline).
All true finish consists in one or other of these things.
Now, therefore, if we are to ‘ finish ’ farther, we
must know more or see more about the tree. And
as the plurality of persons who draw trees know
nothing of them, and will not look at them, it
results necessarily that the effort to finish is not
only vain, but unfinishes — does mischief. In the
lower part of the plate. Figs. 3, 4, 5, and 6 are fac-
similes of pieces of line engraving, meant to repre-
sent trunks of trees; S and 4 are the commonly
accredited t^pes of tree-drawing among engravers
in the eighteenth century ; 5 sfiid 6 are quite modern ;
3 is from a large and important plate by Boydell,
from Claude’s Molten Calf, dated 1781; 4 by Boydell
in 1776, from Rubens’s Waggoner; 6 from a bom-
bastic engraving, published about twenty years ago
by Meulemeester of Brussels, from Raphael’s Moses
at the Burning Bush; and 6 from the foreground
of Miller’s Modern Italy, after Turner
1 I take this example from Miller, because, on the whole, he
is the best engraver of Turner whom we have.
OF FINISH
CHAP. IX]
127
AH- these represent, as far as the engraving goeSf
simply nothing. They are not ‘ finished/' in any
sense but this, that the paper has been covered wita
lines. 4 is the best, because, in the origiad ^Ork
of Kubens, the lines of the boughs, and their manner
of insertion in the trunk, have been so strongly
marked, that no engraving could quite efiace them;
and, inasmuch as it represents these facta^, in the
bpiLighs, that piece of engraving is more finished than
thd other examples, while its own networked texture
is still false and absurd; for there is no texture of
this knitted-stocking-like description on boughs; and
if there were, it would not be seen in the shadow,
but in the light. Miller’s is spirited, and looks
lustrous, but has no resemblance to the original
bough of Turner’s, which is pale, and does not glitter.
The Netherlands work is, on the whole, the worst;
because, in its ridiculous double lines, it adds affect-
ation and conceit to its incapacity. But in all th^se
cases the engravers have worked in total ignorance
both of what is meant by ‘ drawing ’, and of the
form of a tree, covering their paper with certain
lines, which they have been taught to plough in
copper, as a husbandman ploughs in clay.
§ 9. In the next three examples we have instances
of endeavours at finish by the hands of artists them-
selves, marking three stages of knowledge or insight,
and three relative stages of finish. Fig. 7 is Claude’s
(Liber Veritatis^ No. 140, facsimile by Boydell). It
still displays an appalling ignorance of the forms
of trees, but yet is, in mode of execution, better —
that is, more finished — than the engravings, because
not altogether mechanical, and showing some dim,
far-away, blundering memory of a few facts in stems,
such as their variations of texture and roundness,
and bits of young shoots of leaves. 8 is Salvator’s,
facsimiled from part of his original etching of the
Finding of (Edipus. It displays considerable power
of handling — not mechanical, but free and firm, and
is just so much more finished than any of the others
as it displays more intelligence about the way in
128 OF FINISH [part iv
which boughs gather themselves out of the stem,
and about the varying character of their curves.
Finally, Fig. 9 is good work. It is the root of the
apple-tree in Albert Diirer’s Adam and Eve, and
fairly represents the wrinkles of the bark, the smooth
portions emergent beneath, and the general anatomy
of growth. All the lines used conduce to the repre-
sentation of these facts; and the work is therefore
highly finished. It still, however, leaves out, as not
to be represented by such kind of lines, the more
delicate gradations of light and shade. I shall now
‘ finish ’ a little farther, in the next plate (III), the
mere insertion of the two houghs outlined in Fig. 1.
I do this simply by adding assertions of more facts.
First, I say that the whole trunk is dark, as com-
pared with the distant sky. Secondly, I say that
it is rounded by gradations of shadow, in the various
forms shown. And, lastly, I say that (this being
a bit of old pine stripped by storm of its bark) the
wood is fissured in certain directions, showing its
grain, or muscle ^ seen in complicated contortions at
the insertion of the arm and elsewhere.
§ 10. Now this piece of work, though yet far from
complete (we will better it presently), is yet more
finished than any of the others, not because it is
more delicate or more skilful, but simply because it
tells more truth, and admits fewer fallacies. That
which conveys most information, with least inac-
curacy, is always the highest finish; and the question
whether we prefer art so finished, to art unfinished,
is not one of taste at all. It is simply a question
whether \,e like to know much or little; to see
accurately or see falsely; and those whose taste in
art (if they choose so to call it) leads them to like
blindness better than sight, and fallacy better than
fact, would do well to set themselves to some other
pursuit than that of art.
§ XI. In the above plate we have examined chiefly
the grain and surface of the boughs; we have not
yet noticed the finish of their curvature. If the
reader will look back to the No. 7 (Plate II), which,
CHAP, IX] Of fiSlSH 120
in this respect, is the of all the set, he will
immediately observe the exemplification it gives of
Claude’s principal theory about trees; namely, that
the boughs ai*ways parted from each other, two at a
time, in the manner of the prongs of an ill-made
table-fork. It may, perhaps, not be at once believed
that this is indeed Claude’s theory respecting tree-
structure, without some farther examples of his
practice. I have, therefore, assembled on Plate IV,
some (jf the most characteristic passaget of ramifi-
cation in the Liber Veritatis; the plates themselves
are sufficiently cheap (as they should be) and acces-
sible to nearly every one, so that the accuracy of the
facsimiles may be easily tested. I have given in
Appendix I the numbers of the plates from which the
examples are taken, and ib will be found that they
have been lather improved than libelled, only omit-
ting, of course, the surrounding leafage, in order to
show accurately the branch outlines, with winch
alone wo are at present concerned. And it would
be difficult to bring together a series more totally
futile and foolish, more singularly wrong (as the
false griffin was), every way at once : they are stiff,
and yet have no strength; curved, and yet have no
flexibility; monotonous, and yet disorderly; un-
natural, and yet uninventive. They are, in fact, of
that commonest kind of tree bough which a child
or beginner first draws experimentally; nay, I am
well assured, that if this set of branches had been
drawn by a schoolboy,^ ‘ out of his own head ’, his
master would hardly have cared to sbpw them as
signs of any promise in him.
§ 12. ‘Well, but do not the trunks of trees fork,
and fork mostly into two arms at a time?’
Yes; but under as stern anatomical law as the
limbs of an animal; and those hooked junctions in
Plate IV are just as accurately representative of the
branching of wood as Plate A, fig. 2, is of a neck and
shoulders. We should object to such a represent-
ation of shoulders, because we have some interest
in, and knowledge of, human form; w^e do not object
M. p., HI. K
130 OF FINISH [part iv
to Claude’s trees, because we have no interest in,
nor knowledge of, trees. And if it be still alleged
that such work is nevertheless enough to give any
one an ‘ idea ’ of a tree, I answer that it never gave,
nor ever will give, an idea of a tree to any one who
loves trees; and that, moreover, no idea, whatever
its pleasantness, is of the smallest value, which is
not founded on simple facts. What pleasantness
may be in wrong ideas we do not here inquire; the
only question for us has always been, and must
always be. What are the facts?
§ 13. And assuredly those boughs of Claude’s are
not facts; and every one of their contours is, in
the worst sense, unfinished, without even the ex-
pectation or faint hope of possible refinement ever
coming into them. I do not mean to enter here into
the discussion of the characters of ramification ; that
must bo in our separate inquiry into tree-structure
generally; but I will merely give one piece of
Turner’s tree-drawing as an example of what finished
work really is, even in outline. In Plate V Fig. 1 is
the contour (stripped, like Claude’s, of its foliage)
of one of the distant tree-stems dn the drawing of
Bolton Abbey. In order to show its perfectness
better by contrast with bad work (as we have had,
I imagine, enough of Claude), I will take a bit of
Constable; Fig. 2 is the principal tree out of the
engraving of the Lock on the Stour (Leslie’s Life
of Conbtahle). It differs from the Claude outlines
merely in being the kind of 'work which is produced
by an uninventive person dashing about idly, with
a brush, instead of drawing determinately wrong,
with a pen : on the one hand worse than Claude’s,
in being lazier; on the other a little better, in being
more free, but, as representative of tree-form, of
course still wholly barbarous. It is w'orth while to
turn back to the description of the uninventive
painter at work on a tree (Vol. II, chapter on Imagin-
ative Association, § 11), for this trunk of Constable’s
is curiously illustrative of it. One can almost see
him, first bonding it to the right; then, having
CHAP. IX]
OF FINISH
181
gone long enough to the right, turning to the left;
then, having gone long enough to the left, away
to the right again; then dividing it; and ‘ because
there is another tree in the picture with two long
branches (in this case there really is), he knows
that this ought to have three or four, which must
undulate or go backwards and forwards ’, &o. &c.
§ 14. Then study the bit of Turner work : note
first its quietness, unattractiveness, apparent care-
lessness whether you look at it or not; next note
the subtle curvatures within the narrowest limits,
and, when it branches, the unexpected, out-of-the-
way things it does, ]ust what nobody could have
thought of its doing; shooting out like a letter Y,
with a nearly straight branch, and then correcting
its stiffness with a zig-zag behind, so that the boughs,
ugly individually, are beautiful in unison. (In what
I have hereafter to say about trees, I shall need
to dwell much on this character of unexpectedness,
A bough is never drawn rightly if it is not wayward,
so that although, as just now said, quiet at first,
not caring to be looked at, the moment it is looked
at, it seems bent on astonishing you, and doing the
last things you expect it to do.) But our present
purpose is only to note the finish of the Turner
curves, which, though they seem straight and stiff
at first, are, when you look long, seen to be all
tremulous, perpetually wavering along every ed^e
into endless melody o^ change. This is finish m
line, in exactly the same sense that a fine melody
is finished in the association of its notes*.
§ 15. And now, farther, let us take a little bit of
the Turnerian tree in light and shade. . I said above
I would better the drawing of that pine trunk, which,
though it has incipient shade, and muscular action,
has no texture, nor local colour. Now, I take about
an inch and a half of Turner’s ash trunks (one of the
nearer ones in this same drawing of Bolton Abbey)
(Fig. 3, Plate V), and this I cannot better; this is per-
fectly finished; it is not possible to add more truth
to it on that scale. Texture of bark, anatomy of
132 OF FINISH [part iv
muscle beneath, reflected lights in recessed hollows,
stains of dark moss, and flickering shadows from
the foliage above, all are there, as clearly as the
human hand can mark them. I place a bit of trunk
by Constable (Fig. 6) l from another plate in Leslie ’s
Life of him (a dell in Helmingham Park, Suffolk),
for the sake of the same comparison in shade that
we have above in contour. You see Constable does
not know whether he is drawing moss or shadow :
those dark touches in the middle are confused in
his mind between the dark stains on the trunk and
its dark side; there is no anatomy, no cast shadow,
nothing but idle sweeps of the brush, vaguely cir-
cular. The thing is much darker than Turner’s, but
it is not, therefore, finished; it is only blackened.
And ‘ to blacken ’ is indeed the proper word for all
attempts at finish*? without knowledge. All true finish
is added fact ; smd Turner’s word for finishing a picture
was always tiiis significant one, ‘ carry forward
But labour without added knowledge can only blacken
or stain a picture, it cannot finish it. .
§ 16. And this is especially to be remembered as
we pass from comparatively large and distant ob-
jects, such as this single trunk, to the more divided
and nearer features of foreground. Some degree of
ignorance may be hidden, in completing what is far
away; but there is no concealment possible in close
work, and darkening instead of finishing becomes
then the engraver’s only possible resource. It has
always been a wonderful thmg to me to hear people
talk of making foregrounds ‘ vigorous ’, marked
‘ forcible ’, and so on. If you will lie down on your
breast on the next bank you come to (which is
1 Fig. 5 is not, however, so lustrous as Constable’s ; I cannot
help this, having given the original plate to my good friend,
Mr Cousen, with strict charge to facsimile it faithfully ; but
the figure is all the faker, as a representation of Constable’s art,
for those mezzotints in Leslie’s life of him have many qualities
of drawing which are quite wanting in Constable’s blots of
colour. The comparison shall be made elaborately, lietween
picture and picture, in the section on Vegetation.
I^I NIK V: (lool) AND J’.AIJ Tk1,1'-I )KA\ViNG
.V./’., ///.]
I f(l( C fi. Ti2
/ /// 1
Pl \ n VI T ( »Kl ( I >1 M) 1 b Af AGE
l/acc / 13
)F FINISH
133
bringing it dose enough, I should think, to give it
all the forc§ it is capable of), you will see, in the
cluster of leaves and grass close to your face, some-
thing as delicate as this, which I have actually so
drawn, on the opposite page, a mystery of soft
shadow in the depths of the grass, with indefinite
forms of leaves, which you cannot trace nor count,
within it, and out of that, the nearer leaves coming
in every subtle gradation of tender light and flicker-
ing form, quite beyond all delicacy of pencilling to
follow; and yet you will rise up from that bank
(certainly not making it appear coarser by drawing
a little back from it), and profess to represent it by
a few blots of ‘ forcible ’ foreground colour. ‘ Well,
but I cannot draw every leaf that I see on the bank. ’
No, for as we saw, at the beginning of this chapter,
that no human work could be finished so as to express
the delicacy of nature, so neither can it be finished
so as to express the redundance of nature. Accept
that necessity; but do not deny it; do not call your
work finished, when you have, in engraving, subf.
stituted a confusion of coarse black scratches, or in
water-colour a few edgy blots, for ineffable organic
beauty. Follow that beauty as far as you can,
remembering that just as far as you see, know, and
represent it, just so far your work is finished; as
far as you fall short of it, your work is unfinished,
and as far as you substitute any other thing for it,
your work is spoiled. •
§ 17. How far Turner followed it, is not easily
shown; for his finish is so delicate as be nearly
uncopiable. I have just said it was not possible
to finish that ash trunk of his, farther, on such a
scale 1. By using a magnifying-glass, and giving the
same help to the spectator, it might perhaps be pos-
sible to add and exhibit a few more details ; but even
as it is, I cannot by line engraving express all that
there is in that piece of tree-trunk, on the same
scale. I have therefore magnified the upper part of
^ It is of the exact size of the original, the whole drawing
being about 15| inches by H in.
134 OF, FINISH [part iv
it in Fig. 4 (Plate V), so that the reader may better
see the beantiful lines of curvature into which even
its slightest shades and spots are cast. Every quarter
of an inch of Turner’s drawings will bear magnifying
in the same way; much of the finer work in them
can hardly be traced, except by the keenest sight,
until it is magnified. In his painting of Ivy Bridge
the veins are drawn on the wings of a butterfly,
not above three lines in diameter; and in one of his
smaller drawings of Scarborough, in my own posses-
sion, the muscle-shells on the beach are rounded,
and some shown as shut, some as open, though none
are twice as large as the letters of this type; and
yet this is the man who was thought to belong to
the ‘ dashing ’ school, literally because most people
had not patience or delicacy of sight enough to trace
his endless detail.
§ 18. * Suppose it was so ’, perhaps the reader
replies; ‘ still I do not like detail so delicate that
it can hardly be seen. Then you like nothing in
Nature (for you will find she always carries her detail
too far to be traced). This point, however, we shall
examine hereafter ; it is not the question now
whether we like finish or not; our only inquiry here
is, what finish means; and I trust the reader is be-
ginning to be satisfied that it does indeed mean no-
thing but consummate and accumulated truth, and
that our old monotonous test must still serve us
here as elsewhere. And it v^'li become us to consider
seriously why (if indeed it be so) we dislike this
kind of finish — dislike an accumulation of truth. For
assuredly all authority is against us, and no truly
great man can he named in the arts — hut it is that
of one who finished to his utmost. Take Leonardo,
Michael Angelo, and Raphael for a triad, to begin
with. They all completed their detail with such
subtlety of touch and gradation, that, in a careful
drawing by any of the three, you cannot see where
the pencil ceased to touch the paper; the stroke of
1 An oil painting (about 3 ft. by 4 ft. 6 in.), and very broad
in its masses. In the possession of E. Bicknell, Esq.
OP FINISH
135
CHAP. IX]
it is so tender, that, when you look close to the
drawing you can see nothing ; you only see the
effect of it a little way back I Thus tender in execu-
tion — and so complete in detail, that Leonardo must
needs draw every several vein in the little agates and
pebbles of the gravel under the feet of the St Anne
in the Louvre. Take a quartette after the triad —
Titian, Tintoret, Bellini, and Veronese. Examine
the vine-leaves of tlie Bacchus and Ariadne, (Titian’s)
in the National Gallery; examine the borage
blossoms, painted petal by petal, though lying loose
on the table, in Titian’s Supper at Emmaus, in the
Louvre, or the snail-shells on the ground in his
Entombment i ; examine the separately designed
patterns on every drapery of Veronese, in his Mar-
riage in Cana; go to Venice and see how Tintoret
paints the strips of black bark on the birch trunk
that sustains the platform in his Adoration of the
Magi; how Bellini fills the rents of his ruined walls
with the most exquisite clusters of the erba della
Madonna 2. You will find them all in a tale. Take
a quintette after the quartette — Francia, Angelico,
Diirer, Hemling, Perugino — and still the witness
is one, still the same striving in all to such utmost
perfection as their knowledge and hand could reach.
Who shall gainsay these men? Above all, who
shall gainsay them when they and Nature say pre-
cisely the same thing? for where does Nature pause
in her finishing — that finishing which consists not in
the smoothing of surface, but the filling of space,
and the multiplication of life and thought?
Who shall gainsay them? I, for one, dare not;
but accept their teaching, with Nature’s, in all
humbleness.
‘ But is there, then, no good in any work which
does not pretend to perfectness? Is there no saving
1 These snail-shells are very notable, occurriDg as they do in,
perhaps, the very grandest and broadest of all Titian’s
compositions.
2 Linaria Cymbalaria, the ivy-leaved toadflax of English
gardens.
136 OF THE USE OF PICTURES [part iv
clause from this terrible requirement of completion?
And if there be none, what is the meaning of all you
have said elsewhere about rudeness as the glory of
Gothic work, and, even a few pages back, about the
danger of finishing, for our modern workmen?’
Indeed there are many saving clauses, and there
is ^much good in imperfect work. But we had better
cast the consideration of these drawbacks and ex-
ceptions into another chapter, and close this one,
without obscuring, in any wise, our broad conclusion
that ‘ finishing ’ means in art simply ‘ telling more
truth and that whatever we have in any sort
begun wisely, it is good to finish thoroughly.
CHAPTER X
OF THE USE OF PICTURES
§ 1. I AM afraid this will be a difficult chapter;
one of drawbacks, qualifications, and exceptions.
But the more I see of useful truths, the more I find
that, like human beings, they are eminently biped;
and, although, as far as apprehended by human in-
telligence, they are usually seen in a crane-like,
posture, standing on one leg, whenever they are to
be stated so as to maintain themselves against all
attack it is quite necessary th/?y should stand on two,
and have their complete balance on opposite fulcra.
§ 2. I dcxibt not that one, objection, with which
as well as with another we may begin, has struck
the reader very forcibly, after comparing the illus-
trations above given from Turner, Constable, and
Claude. He will wonder how it was that Turner,
finishing in this exquisite way, and giving truths
by the thousand, where other painters gave only one
or two, yet, of all painters, seemed to obtain least
acknowledgeable resemblance to nature, so that the
world cried out upon him for a madman, at the
moment when he was giving exactly the highest and
CHAP, x] OF THE USE OF PICTUBES 187
most Consummate truth that had ever been seen in
landscape.
And he will wonder why still there seems reason
for this outcry. Still, after what analysis and proof
of his being right have as yet been given, the reader
may perhaps be saying to himself : ‘ All this reason-
ing is of no use to me. Turner does not give me the
idea of nature; I do not feel before one of his pic-
tures as I should in the real scene. Constable tatkes
me out into the shower, and Claude into the sun;
and De Wint makes me feel as if I were walking in
the fields; but Turner keeps me in the house, and
I know always that I am looking at a picture.’
I might answer to this : Well, what else should
he do? If you want to feel as if you were in a
shower, cannot you go and get wet without help from
Constable? If you want to feel as if you were walk-
ing in the fields, cannot you go and walk in them
without help from De Wint? But if you want to
sit in your room and look at a beautiful picture,
why should you blame the artist for giving you one?
This was the answer actually made to me by various
journalists, when first I showed that Turner was
truer than other painters : ‘ Nay ’, said they, ‘ we
do not want truth, we want something else than
truth ; we would not have nature, but something
better than nature.’
§ 3. I do not mean to accept that answer, although
it seems at this moment to make for me : I have
never accepted it. As* I raise my eyes from the
paper, to think over the curious mingling in it, of
direct error, and far-away truth, I see upon the room-
walls, first. Turner’s drawing of the chain of the
Alps from the Superga above Turin; then a study
of a block of gneiss at Chamouni, with the purple
Aiguilles-Rougos behind it; another, of the towers
of the Swiss Fribourg, with a cluster of pine forest
behind them; then another Turner, Isola Bella, with
the blue opening to the St Gothard in the distance;
and then a fair bit of thirteenth-century illumina-
tion, depicting, at the top of the page, the Saluta-
188 OF THE USE OF PICTURES [part iv
tion; and beneath, the painter who painted it, sitting
in his little convent cell, with a legend above him
to this effect
jego jojjfa atpax librum.
I, John, wrote this book.
None of these things are bad pieces of art; and
yet — ^if it were offered me to have, instead of them,
so many windows, out of which I should see, first,
the real chain of the Alps from the Superga; then
the real block of gneiss, and Aiguilles-Rouges ; then
the real towers of Fribourg, and pine forest; the
real Isola Bella; and, finally, the true Mary and
Elizabeth; and beneath them, the actual old monk
at work in his cell — would very unhesitatingly
change my five pictures for the five windows; and
so, I apprehend, would most people, not, it seems
to me, unwisely.
‘ Well, then ’, the reader goes on to question me,
‘ the more closely the picture resembles such a
window, the better it must be?’
Yes.
‘ Then if Turner does not give me the impression
of such a window, that is, of Nature, there must
be something wrong in Turner?’
Yes.
‘ And if Constable and De Wint give me the impres-
sion of such a window, there must be something
right in Constable and De Wint?’
Yes.
‘ And something more right than in Turner?’
No.
‘ Will you explain yourself?’
I have explained myself, long ago, and that fully;
perhaps too fully for the simple sum of the explana-
tion to be remembered. If the reader will glance
back to, and in the present state of our inquiry
reconsider in the first volume. Part I, Sec. I, Chap.
V, and Part II, Sec. I, Chap. VII, he will find our
present difficulties anticipated. There are some
truths, easily obtained, which give a deceptive re-
CHAP. X] OF THE USE OF PICTUIIES 189
semblance to Nature; others only to be obtained
with difficulty, which cause no deception, but give
inner and deep resemblance. These two classes of
truths cannot be obtained together; choice must be
made between them. The bad painter gives the
cheap deceptive resemblance. The good painter gives
the precious non -deceptive resemblance. Constable
perceives in a landscape that the grass is wet, the
meadows flat, and the boughs shady; that is to
say, about as much as, I suppose, might In general
be apprehended, between them, by an intelli-
gent fawn, and a skylark. Turner perceives at a
glance the whole sum of visible truth open to human
intelligence. So Berghem perceives nothing in a
figure, beyond the flashes of light on the folds of its
dress; but Michael Angelo perceives every flash of
thought that is passing through its spirit : and Con-
stable and Berghem may imitate windows; Turner
and Michael Angelo can by no means imitate win-
dows. But Turner and Michael Angelo are never-
theless the best.
§ 4. ‘ Well, but ’, the reader persists, ‘ you
admitted just now that because Turner did not get
his work to look like a window there was something
wrong in him.’
I Hid so ; if he were quite right he would have
all truth, low as well as high; that is, he would be
Nature and not Turner : but that is impossible to
man. There is much ^lat is wrong in him; much
that is infinitely wrong in all human effort. But,
nevertheless, in some an infinity of Betterness above
other human effort.
‘ Well, but you said you would change your
Turners for windows, why not, therefore, for Con-
stables ? ’
Nay, I did not say that I would change them
for windows merely, but for windows which com-
manded the chain of the Alps and Isola Bella.
That is to say, for all the truth that there is in
Turner, and all the truth besides which is not in
him; but I would not change them for Constables,
140 OF THE USE OF PICTURES [part iv
to have a small piece of truth which is not in Turner,
and none of the mighty truth which there is.
§ 5. Thus far, then, though the subject is one
requiring somewhat lengthy explanation, it involves
no real difficulty. There is not the slightest incon-
sistency in the mode in which throughout this work
I Ahave desired the relative merits of painters to be
judged. I have always said, he who is closest to
Nature is best. All rules are useless, all genius is
useless, all labour is useless, if you do not give facts;
the more facts you give the greater you are; and
there is no fact so unimportant as to be prudently
despised, if it bo possible to represent it. Nor, but
that I have long known the truth of Herbert’s lines,
Some men are
Full of themselves, and answer their own notion,
would it have been without intense surprise that I
heard querulous readers asking, ‘ how it was pos-
sible ’ that I could praise Pre-Raphaelitism and
Turner also. For, from the beginning of this book
to this page of it, I have never praised Turner highly
for any other cause than that he gave facta more
delicately, more Pre-Raphaelitically, than other men.
Careless readers, who dashed at the descriptions
and missed the arguments, took up their own con-
ceptions of the cause of my liking Turner, and said
to themselves : ‘ Turner cannot draw, Turner is
generalizing, vague, visionary,; and the Pre-Raphael-
ites are hard and distinct. How can any one like
both?’i. But I never said .that Turner could not
1 People of any sense, however, confined themselves to
wonder. I think it was only in The Art Journal of September
1st, 1854, that any writer had the meanness to charge me with
insincerity. ‘ The pictures of Turner atid the works of the
Pre-Raphaelites are the very antipodes of each other ; it is,
therefore, impossible that one and the same individual can with
any show of sincerity [Note, by the way, the Art-Union has no
idea that real sincerity is a thing existent or possible at all.
All that it expects or hopes of human nature is, that it should
have show of .sincerity.] stand forth as the thick and thin [I
perceive the writer intends to teach me English, as well as
CHAP. X] OF THE USE OF PICTUKES 141
draw. I never said that he was vague or visionary.
What I said was, that nobody had ever drawn so
well: that nobody was so certain, so wn- visionary ;
that nobody had ever given so many hard and down-
right facts. Glance back to the first volume, and
note the expressions now. ‘ He is the only painter
who ever drew a mountain or a stone i ; the only
painter who can draw the stem of a tree; the only
painter who has ever drawn the sky, previous artists
having only drawn it typically or partially, but he
absolutely and universally.’ Note how he is praised
in his rock drawing for ‘ not selecting a pretty or
interesting morsel here or there, but giving the
whole truth, with all the relations of its parts ’ 2.
Observe how the great virtue of the landscape of
Cima da Conegliano and the early sacred painters is
said to be giving ‘ entire, exquisite, humble, real-
ization — a strawberry-plant in the foreground with
a blossom, arid a berry just set^ and one half ripe,
and one ripe, all patiently and innocently painted
from the real thing, and therefore most divine.'
Then re-read the following paragraph (§ 10), care-
fully, and note its conclusion, that the thoroughly
great men are those who have done everything
thoroughly, and who have never despised anything,
honesty.] eulogist of both. With a certain knowledge of art,
such as may be possessed by the author of English Painters,
[Note, farther, that the eminent critic does not so much as
know the title of the book ^e is criticizing.] it is not difficult
to praise any bad or mediocre picture that may be qualified
with extravagance or mysticism. This author owes the public
a heavy debt of explanation, which a lifetime spent in ingenious
reconciliations would not suffice to discharge. A fervent
admiration of certain pictures by Turner, and, at the same
time, of some of the severest productions of the Pre-Raphaelites,
presents an insuperable problem to persons whose taste in art
18 regulated by definite principles.’
1 Part II, Sec. I, Chap. VII, § 46.
2 Part II. Sec. IV, Chap. IV, § 23., and Part II, Sec. I,
Chap. VII, ^ 9. The whole of the Preface to the Second
Edition is written to maintain this one point of specific detail
agaiust the advocates of generalization.
142 OF THE USE OF PICTURES [part iv
however small, of God’s making; with the instance
given* of Wordsworth % daisy casting its shadow on
a stone; and the following sentence, ‘ Our painters
must come to this before they have done their duty. ’
And yet, when our painters did come to this, did
do their duty, and did paint the daisy with its
shadow (this passage having been written years be-
fore Pre-Raphaelitism was thought of), people won-
dered how I could possibly like what was neither
more nor less than the precise fulfilment of my own
most earnest exhortations and highest hopes.
§ 6. Thus far, then, all I have been saying is
absolutely consistent, and tending to one simple
end. Turner is praised for his truth and finish; that
truth of which I am beginning to give examples.
Pre-Raphaelitism is praised for its truth and finish;
and the whole duty inculcated upon the artist is that
of being in all respects as like Nature as possible.
And yet this is not all I have to do. There is
more than this to be inculcated upon the student,
more than this to be admitted or established, be-
fore the foundations of just judgment can be laid.
For, observe, although I believe any sensible person
would exchange his pictures, however good, for win-
dows, he would not feel, and ought not to feel, that the
arrangement was entirely gainful to him. He would
feel it was an exchange of a less good of one kind,
for a greater of another kind, but that it was de-
finitely exchange f not pure gain, not merely getting
more truth instead of less. The picture would be a
serious loss; something gone which the actual land-
scape could never restore, though it might give some-
thing better in its place, as age may give to the heart
something better than its youthful delusion, but
cannot give again the sweetness of that delusion.
§ 7. What is this in the picture which is precious
to us, and yet is not natural? Hitherto our argu-
ments have tended, on the whole, somewhat to the
depreciation of art; and the reader may every now
and then, so far as he has been convinced by them,
have been inclined to say, ‘ Why not give up this
CHAP, x] 0 ¥ THE USE OF PICTURES 14a
whole science of Mockery at once, since its onl^^
virtue is in representing facts, and it cannot,
best, represent them completely, besides being liabl4
to all manner of shortcomings and dishonesties—
why not keep to the facts, to real fields, and hills,
and men, and let this dangerous painting alone?*
No, it would not be well to do this. Painting has
its peculiar virtues, not only consistent with, but
even resulting from, its shortcomings and weaknesses.
Let us see vmat these virtues are.
§ 8. I must ask permission, as I have sometimes
done before, to begin apparently a long way from the
point.
Not long ago, as I was leaving one of the towns
of Switzerland, early in the morning, I saw in the
clouds behind the houses an Alp which I did not
know, a grander Alp than any I knew, nobler than
the Schreckhorn or the Monch; terminated, as it
seemed, on one side by a precipice of almost un-
imaginable height; on the other, sloping away for
leagues in one field of lustrous ice, clear and fair
and blue, flashing here and there into silver under
the morning sun. For a moment I received a sensa-
tion of as much sublimity as any natural object could
possibly excite; the next moment, I saw that my
unknown Alp was the glass roof of one of the work-
shops of the town, rising above its nearer houses,
and rendered aerial and indistinct by some pure blue
wood smoke which rose from intervening chimneys.
It is evident, that so *far as the mere delight of
the eye was concerned, the glass roof was l^iere equal,
or at least equal for a moment, to the Alp. Whether
the power of the object over the heart was to be
small or great, depended altogether upon what it
was understood for, upon its being taken possession
of and apprehended in its full nature, either as a
granite mountain or a group of panes of glass; and
thus, always, the real majesty of the appearance of
the thing to us, depends upon the degree in which
we ourselves possess the power of understanding it,
— that penetrating, possession -taking power of the
144 OF THE USE OF PICTURES [paet iv
imagination, which has been long ago defined i as
the very life of the man, considered as a seeing
creature. For though the casement had indeed been
an Alp, there are many persons on whose minds it
would have produced no more effect than the glass
roof. It would have been to them a glittering object
of a certain apparent length and breadth, and
whether of glass or ice, whether twenty feet in length,
or twenty leagues, would have made no difference
to them; or, rather, would not have been in any
wise conceived or considered by them. Examine the
nature of your own emotion (if you feel it) at the
sight of the Alp, and you find all the brightness
of that emotion hanging, like dew on gossamer, on
a curious web of subtle fancy and imperfect know-
ledge. First, you have a vague idea of its size,
coupled with wonder at the work of the great
Builder of its walls and foundations, then an appre-
hension of its eternity, a pathetic sense of its per-
petualness, and your own transientness, as of the
grass upon its sides; then, and in this very sad-
ness, a sense of strange companionship with past
generations in seeing what they saw. They did not
see the clouds that are floating over your head; nor
the cottage wall on the other side of the field; nor
the road by which you are travelling. But they saw
that. The wall of granite in the heavens was the
same to them as to you. They have ceased to look
upon it; you will soon ce^se to look also, and the
granite wall will be for others. Then, mingled with
these mo»e solemn imaginations, come the under-
standings of the gifts and glories of the Alps, the
fancying forth of all the fountains that well from
its rocky walls, and strong rivers that ane born out
of its ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that wind
between its cliffs, and all the chfilets that gleam
among its clouds, and happy farmsteads couched
upon its pastures; while together with the thoughts
of these, rise strange sympathies with all the un-
known of human life, and happiness, and death,
1 Yol. II. Chapter on ‘ Penetrative Imagination.’
CHAP. X] OF THE USE OP PICTURES 145
signified by that narrow white flame of the everlast-
ing snow, seen so far in the morning sky.
These images, and far more than these, lie at
the root of the emotion which you feel at the sight
of the Alp. You may not trace them in your heart,
for there is a great deal more in your heart, of evil
and good, than you ever can trace; but they stir you
and quicken you for all that. Assuredly, so far as you
feel more at beholding the snowy mountain than any
other object of the same sweet silvery grey, these
are the kind of images which cause you to do so;
and, observe, these are nothing more than a greater
apprehension of the facts of the thing. We call the
power ‘ Imagination ’, because it imagines or con-
ceives; but it is only noble imagination if it imagines
or conceives the truth. And, according to the degree
of knowledge possessed, and of sensibility to the
pathetic or impressive character of the things known,
will be the degree of this imaginative delight.
§ 9. But the main point to be noted at present
is, that if the imagination can be excited to this
its peculiar work, it matters comparatively little
what it is excited by. If the smoke had not cleared
partially away, the glass roof might have pleased
me as well as an Alp, until I had quite lost sight
of it; and if, in a picture, the imagination can be
once caught, and, without absolute affront fi:*om
some glaring fallacy, set to work in its own field,
the imperfection of thq historical details themselves
is, to the spectator’s enjoyment, of small conse-
quence. o
Hence it is, that poets, and men of strong feeling
in general^ are apt to be among the very worst judges
of painting. The slightest hint is enough for them.
Tell them that a white stroke means a ship, and a
black stain, a thunderstorm, and they will be per-
fectly satisfied with both, and immediately proceed
to remember all that they ever felt about ships and
thunderstorms, attributing the whole current and
fulness of their own feelings to the painter’s work;
while probably, if the picture be really good, and
M. P., III. L %
1*6 OF THE USE OF PICTURES [part iv
full of stern fact, the poet, or man of feeling, will
find some of its fact in his way^ out of the particular
course of his own thoughts — be offended at it, take
to criticizing and wondering at it, detect, at last,
some imperfection in it — such as must be inherent in
all human work — and so finally quarrel with, and
reject the whole thing. Thus, Wordsworth writes
nifany sonnets to Sir George Beaumont and Haydon,
none to Sir Joshua or to Turner.
§ 10. Hence, also the error into which many super-
ficial artists fall, in speaking of ‘ addressing the
imagination ’ as the only end of art. It is quite true
that the imagination must be addressed; but it may
be very suffiGiently addressed by the stain left by an
ink-bottle thrown at the wall. The thrower has little
credit, though an imaginative observer may find, per-
haps, more to amuse him in the erratic nigrescence
than in many a laboured picture. And thus, in a
slovenly or ill-finished picture, it is no credit to the
artist that he has ‘ addressed the imagination
nor is the success of such an appeal any criterion
whatever of the merit of the work. The duty of an
artist is not only to address and awaken, but to
guide the imagination; and there is no safe guidance
but that of simple concurrence with fact. It is no
matter that the picture takes the fancy of A or B,
that C writes sonnets to it, and D feels it to be
divine. This is still the only question for the artist,
or for us : ‘ Is it a fact? Are things really so?’
* Is the picture an Alp among pictures, full, firm,
eternal; or only a glass house, frail, hollow, con-
temptible, demolishable ; calling, at all honest hands,
for detection and demolition?’
§ 11. Hence it is also that so much grievous diffi-
culty stands in the way of obtaining real opinion
about pictures at all. Tell any man, of the slightest
imaginative power, that such and such a picture
is good, and means this or that : tell him, for in-
stance, that a Claude is good, and that it means
trees, and grass, and water; and forthwith, what-
ever faith, virtue, humility, and imagination there
CHAP. X] 0¥ THE USE OF PICTURES 147
are in the man, rise up to help Claude, and to declare
that indeed it is all ‘ excellent good, i ’faith’; and
whatever in the course of his life he has felt of
pleasure in trees and grass, he will begin to reflect
upon and enjoy anew, supposi^ all the while it is
the picture he is enjoying, ^nce, when once a
painter’s reputation is accredited, it must be a stub-
born kind of person indeed whom he will not please,
or seeni to please; for all the vain and weak people
pretend to be pleased with him, for their own credit’s
sake, and all the humble and imaginative people
seriously and honestly fancy they are pleased with
him, deriving indeed, very certainly, delight from his
work, but a delight whicn, if they were kept in the
same temper, they would equally derive (and, indeed,
constantly do derive) from the grossest daub that
can be manufactured in imitation by the pawnbroker.
Is, therefore, the pawnbroker’s imitation as good
as the original? Not so. There is the certain test
of goodness and badness, which I am always striv-
ing to get people to use. As long as they are satis-
fied if they find their feelings pleasantly stirred and
their fancy gaily occupied, so long there is for them
no good, no bad. Anything may please, or any-
thing displease, them; and their entire manner of
thought and talking about art is mockery, and all
their judgments are laborious injustices. But let
them, in the teeth of their pleasure or displeasure,
simply put the calm question. Is it so? Is that the
way a stone is shaped, the way a cloud is wreathed,
the way a leaf is veined? and they are safe. They
will do no more injustice to themselves nor to other
men; they will learn to whose guidance they may
trust their imagination, and from whom they must
for ever withhold its reins.
§ 12. ‘Well, but why have you dragged in this
poor spectator’s imagination at all, if you have no-*
thing more to say for it than this ; if you are merely
going to abuse it, and go back to your tiresome
facts?*
Nay; I am not going to abuse it. On the con-
%m OF THE USE OF PICTURES [part iv
I have to assert, in a temper profoundly vener-
ant of it, that though we must not suppose every-
thing is right when this is aroused, we may be sure
that something is wrong when this is not aroused.
The something wrong may be in the spectator or
in the picture; and if the picture be demonstrably
in accordance with truth, the odds are, that it is
in the spectator ; but there is wrong somewhere ; for
the work of the picture is indeed eminently to get
at this imaginative power in the beholder, and all
its facts are of no use whatever if it does not. No
matter how much truth it tells if the hearer be asleep.
Its first work is to wake him, then to teach him.
§ 13. Now, observe, while, as it penetrates into
the nature of things, the imagination is pre-eminently
a beholder of things as they arc, it is, in its creative
function, an eminent beholder of things when and
where they are not; a seer, that is, in the prophetic
sense, calling ‘ the things that are not as though
they were and for ever delighting to dwell on that
which is not tangibly present. And its great func-
tion being the calling forth, or back, that which is
not visible to bodily sense, it has of course been
made to take delight in the fulfilment of its proper
function, and pre-eminently to enjoy, and spend its
energy on, things past and future, or out of sight,
rather than things present, or in sight. So that if
the imagination is to be called to take delight in any
object, it will not be always well, if we can help
it, to put the real object there ^ before it. The imagin-
ation woul(^ on the whole rather have it not there;
the reality and substance are' rather in the imagin-
ation’s way; it would think a good deal more of
the thing if it could not see it. Hence, that strange
and sometimes fatal charm, which there is in all
things as long as we wait for them, and the moment
we have lost them; but which fades while we poss-
ess them; that sweet bloom of all that is far away,
which perishes under our touch. Yet the feeling of
this is not a weakness ; it is one of the most glorious
gifts of the human mind, making the whole infinite
CHAP. X] OF THE USE OF PICTURES 140
future, and imperishable past, a richer inheritance,
if faithfully inherited, than the changeful, frail, jSeet-
ing present; it is also one of the many witnesses
in us to the truth that these present and tangible
things are not meant to satisfy us. The instinct be-
comes a weakness only when it is weakly indulged,
and when the faculty which was intended by God
to give back to us what we have lost, and gild for
us what is to come, is so perverted as only to darken
what we possess. But, perverted or pure, the in-
stinct itself is everlasting, and the substantial
presence even of the things which we love the best,
will inevitably and for ever be found wanting in one
strange and tender charm, which belonged to the
dreams of them.
§ 14. Another character of the imagination is
equally constant, and, to our present inquiry, of yet
greater importance. It is eminently a weariable
faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing
fatigue; so that if wo give it too many objects at
a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones
for a long time together, it fails under the effort,
becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily
fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal
till it has had rest. And this is the real nature of
the weariness which is so often felt in travelling,
from seeing too much. It is not that the monotony
and number of the beautiful things seen have made
them valueless, but that the imaginative power has
been overtaxed; and, instead of letting it rest, the
traveller, wondering to find himself dull, and in-
capable of admiration, seeks, for something more
admirable, excites and torments, and drags the poor
fainting imagination up by the shoulders : ‘ Look at
this, and look at that, and this more wonderful still I’
— until the imaginatit^o faculty faints utterly away,
beyond all farther torment, or pleasure, dead for
rhany a day to come; and the despairing prodigal
takes to horse-racing in the Campagna, good now
for nothing else than that; whereas, if the imagin-
ation had only been laid down on the grass, among
150 OF THE USE OF PICTURES [part iv
simple things, and left quiet for a little while, it
would have come to itself gradually, recovered its
strength and colour, and soon been fit for work
again. So that, whenever the imagination is tired,
it is necessary to find for it something, not more
admirable but less admirable; such as in that weak
state it can deal with; then give it peace, and it
will recover.
§ 16 . I well recollect the walk on which I first
found out this; it was on the winding road from
Sallenche, sloping up the hills towards St Gervais,
one cloudless Sunday afternoon. The road circles
softly between bits of rocky bank and mounded pas-
ture; little cottages and chapels gleaming out from
among the trees at every turn. Behind me, some
leagues in length, rose the jagged range of the moun-
tains of the R^posoir; on the other side of the valley,
the mass of the Aiguille de Varens, heaving its seven
thousand feet of clifi into the air at a single effort,
its gentle gift of waterfall, the Nant d’Arpenaz, like
a pillar of cloud at its feet; Mont Blanc and all its
aiguilles, one silver flame, in front of me; marvellous
blocks of mossy granite and dark glades of pine
around me; but I could enjoy nothing, and could not
for a long while make out what was the matter with
me, until at last I discovered that if I confined my-
self to one thing — and that a little thing — a tuft
of moss, or a single crag at the top of the Varens,
or a wreath or two of foam at the bottom of the
Nant d’Arpenaz, I began to enjoy it directly, be-
cause then I had mind enough to put into the thing,
and the enjoyment arose from the quantity of the
imaginative energy I could bring to bear upon it;
but when I looked at or thought of all together,
moss, stones, Varens, Nant d’Arpenaz, and Mont
Blanc, I had not mind enough to give to all, and
none were of any value. The conclusion which would
have been formed, upon this, by a German philoso-
pher, would have been that the Mont Blanc was
of no value; that he and his imagination only were
of value; that the Mont Blanc, in fact, except so
CHAP. X] OP THE USE OP PICTUEES 151
far as he was able to look at it, eould not be con-
sidered as having any existence. But the only con-
clusion which occurred to me as reasonable under
the circumstances (I have seen no ground for alter-
ing it since) was, that I was an exceedingly small
creature, much tired, and, at the moment, not a
little stupid, for whom a blade of grass, or a wreath
of foam, was quite food enough and to spare, and
that if I tried to take any more, I should make
myself ill. Whereupon, associating myself frater-
nally with some ants, who were deeply interested in
the conveyance of some small sticks over the road,
and rather, as I think they generally are, in too
great a hurry about it, I returned home iii a little
while with great contentment, thinking how well
it was ordered that, as Mont Blanc and his pine
forests could not be everywhere, nor all the world
come to see them, the human mind, on the whole,
should enjoy itself most surely in an ant-like manner,
and be happy and busy with the bits of stick and
grains of crystal that fall in its way to be handled,
in daily duty.
§ 16. It follows evidently from the first of these
characters of the imagination, its dislike of substance
and presence, that a picture has in some measure
even an advantage with us in not being real. The
imagination rejoices in having something to do,
springs up with all its willing power, flattered and
happy; and ready with its fairest colours and most
tender pencilling, to prove itself worthy of the trust,
and exalt into sweet supremacy the shadow that
has been confided to its fondness. And thus, so far
from its being at all an object to the painter to make
his work look real, he ought to dread such a con-
summation as the loss of one of its most precious
claims upon the heart. So far from striving to con-
vince the beholder that what he sees is substance,
his mind should be to what he paints as the fire to
the body on the pile, burning away the ashes, leav-
ing the unconquerable shade — an immortal dream.
So certain is this, that the slightest local success in
OF THE USE OF PICTUEES [part iv
giving the deceptive appearance of reality — the imita-
tion, for instance, of the texture of a bit of wood,
with its grain in relief — ^will instantly destroy the
charm of a whole picture ; the imagination feels itself
insulted and' injured, and passes by with cold con-
tempt; nay, however beautiful the whole scene may
be, as of late in much of our highly wrought paint-
ing for the stage, the mere fact of its being decep-
tively real is enough to make us tire of it; we may
be surprised and pleased for a moment, but the
imagination will not on those terms be persuaded
to give any of its help, and, in a quarter of an hour,
we wish the scene would change.
§ 17. * Well, but then, what becomes of all these
long dogmatic chapters of yours about giving nothing
but the truth, and as much truth as possible?’
The chapters are all quite right. ‘ Nothing but the
Truth I say still. ‘ As much Truth as possible
I say still. . But truth so presented, that it will need
the help of the imagination to make it real. Be-
tween the paintei and the beholder, each doing his
proper part, the reality should be sustained; and
after the beholding imagination has come forward and
done its best, then, with its help and in the full
action of it, the beholder should bo able to say, I
feel as if I were at the real place, or seeing the real
incident. But not without that help.
§ 18. Farther, in consequence of that other charac-
ter of the imagination, f atigiiableness , it is a great
advantage to the picture that it need not present
too much a^i once, and that what it does present
may bo so chosen and ordered as not only to be
more easily seized, but to give the imagination
rest, and, as it were, places to lie down and stretch
its limbs in; kindly vacancies, beguiling it back
into action, with pleasant and cautious sequence of
incident; all jarring thoughts being excluded, all
vain redundance denied, and all just and sweet tran-
sition permitted.
And thus it is that, for the most part, imperfect
sketches, engravings, outlines, rude sculptures, and
CHAP, x] OF THE USE OF PICTURES 153
other forms of abstraction, possess a charm which
the most finished picture frequently wants. For not
only does the finished picture excite the imagin-
ation less, but, like nature itself, it taxes it more.
None of it can be enjoyed till the imagination is
brought to bear upon it; and the details of the com-
pleted picture are so numerous, that it needs greater
strength and willingness in the beholder to follow
them all out; the redundance, perhaps, being not
too great for the mind of a careful observer , but too
great for a casual or careless observer. So that
although the perfection of art will always consist
in the utmost acceptable completion, yet, as every
added idea will increase the difficulty of apprehen-
sion, and every added touch advance the dangerous
realism which makes the imagination languid, the
difference between a noble and ignoble painter is in
nothing more sharply defined than in this — ^that
the first wishes to put into his work as much truth
as possible, and yet to keep it looking wn-real; the
second wishes to get through his work lazily, with
as little truth as possible, and yet to make it look
real; and, so far as they add colour to their abstract
sketch, the first realizes for the sake of the colour,
and the second colours for the sake of the real-
ization
§ 10. And then, lastly, it is another infinite
advantage possessed by the picture, that in these
various differences from reality it becomes the ex-
pression of the power and intelligence of a compan-
ionable human soul. In all this choice, aig-angement,
penetrative sight, and kindly guidance, we recog-
nize a supernatural operation, and perceive, not
merely the landscape or incident as in a mirror, but,
besides, the presence of what, after all, may per-
haps, be the most wonderful piece of divine work in
the whole matter — the great human spirit through
which it is manifested to us. So that, although with
1 Several other points connected with this subject have
already been noticed in the last chapter of the /Stones of
Venice^ § 21, &c.
154 OF THE USE OF HOTURES [part iv
respect to many important scenes, it might, as we
saw above, be one of the most precious gifts that
could be given us to see them with our own eyesy
yet also in many things it is more desirable to be
permitted to see them with the eyes of others; and
although, to the small, conceited, and affected
painter displaying his narrow knowledge and tiny
desterities, our only word may be, ‘ Stand aside from
between that nature and me ’ : yet to the great
imaginative painter — greater a million times in every
faculty of soul than we — our word may wisely be,
‘ Come between this nature and me — this nature
which is too great and too wonderful for me; temper
it for me, interpret it to me; let me see with your
eyes, and hear with your ears, and have help and
strength from your great spirit.’
All the noblest pictures have this character. They
are true or inspired ideals, seen in a moment to be
ideal; that is to say, the result of all the highest
powers of the imagination, engaged in the discovery
and apprehension of the purest truths, and having
so arranged them as best to show their preciousness
and exalt their clearness. They are always orderly,
always one, ruled by one great purpose throughout,
in the fulfilment of which every atom of the detail is
called to help, and would be missed if removed;
this peculiar oneness being the result, not of obedi<
ence to any teachable law, but of the magnificence
of tone in the perfect mind, which accepts only what
is good for its great purposes., rejects whatever is
foreign or<. redundant, and instinctively and instan-
taneously ranges whatever it accepts, in sublime
subordination and helpful brotherhood.
§ 20. Then, this being the greatest art, the lowest
art is the mimicry of it — the subordination of nothing
to nothing; the elaborate arrangement of sightless-
ness and emptiness; the order which has no object;
the unity which has no life, and the law which has
no love; the light which has nothing to illumine,
and shadow which has nothing to relieve i.
1 * Though my pictures should have nothing else, they shall
CHAP.X] OF THE USE OF PICTURES 155
§ 21. And then, between these two, conies the
wholesome, happy, and noble — ^though not noblest
— art of simple transcript from nature; into which,
so far as our modern Pre-Raphaelitism falls, it will
indeed do sacred service in ridding us of the old
fallacies and componencies, but cannot itself rise
above the level of simple and happy usefulness. So
far a^ it is to be great, it must add — and so far as
it is great, has already added — ^the great imaginative
element to all its faithfulness in transcript. And
for this reason, I said in the close of my Edinburgh
Lectures i that Pre-Raphaelitism, as long as it con-
fined itself to the simple copying of nature, could not
take the character of the highest class of art. But
it has already, almost unconsciously, supplied the
defect, and taken that character, in all its best
results; and, so far as it ought, hereafter, it will
assuredly do so, as soon as it is permitted to main-
tain itself in any other position than that of stern
antagonism to the composition-teachers around it.
I say ‘ so far as it ought ’, because, as already noticed
in that same place, we have enough, and to spare,
of noble invent ful pictures : so many have we, that
we let them moulder away on the walls and roofs
of Italy without one regretful thought about them.
But of simple transcripts from nature, till now we
have had none; even Van Eyck and Albert Durer
having been strongly filled with the spirit of grot-
esque idealism; so that the Pre-Raphaelites have, to
the letter, fulfilled Steele’s description of the author,
who ‘ determined to write in an entirely new manner,
and describe things exactly as they took place.*
§ 22. We have now, I believe, in some sort an-
have Chiaroscuro.’ CoiiSTABLE (in Leslie’s Life of him). It
is singular to reflect what that fatal Chiaroscuro has done to
art, 111 the full extent of its influence. It has been not only
shadow, but shadow of Death ; passing over the face of the
ancient art, as death itself might over a fair human counten-
ance ; whispering, as it reduced it to the white projections and
hghtless orbits of the skull, ‘Thy face shall have nothing else,
but it shall have Chiaroscuro.’
156 OF THE USE OF PICTURES [part iv
swered most of the questions which were suggested
to us during our statement of the nature oi great
art. I could recapitulate the answers; but perhaps
the reader is already sufficiently wearied of the recur-
rence of the terms ‘ Ideal ‘ Nature ‘ Imagin-
ation ‘ Invention and will hardly care to see them
again interchanged among each other, in the form-
alities of a summary. What difficulties may yet
occur to him will, I think, disappear as he either
re-reads the passages which suggested them, or
follows out the consideration of the subject for him-
self : this very simple, but very precious, conclusion
being continually remembered by him as the sum
of ail; that greatness in art (as assuredly in all
other things, but more distinctly in this than in
most of them), is not a teachable nor gainable thing,
but the expression of the mind of a God-made great
man; that teach, or preach, or labour as you will,
everlasting difference is set between one man’s capa-
city and another’s; and that this God-given supre-
macy is the priceless thing, always just as rare in
the world at one time as another. What you can
manufacture, or communicate, you can lower the
price of, but this mental supremacy is incommuni-
cable; you will never multiply its quantity, nor
lower its price; and nearly the best tiling that men
can generally do is to set themselves, not to the at-
tainment, but the discovery of this; learning to know
gold, when we see it, from iron-glance, and diamonds
from flint-sand, being for most of us a more profit-
able employment than trying to make diamonds out
of our own charcoal. And for this God-made supre-
macy, I generally have used, and shall continue to
use, the word Inspiration, not carelessly nor lightly,
but in all logical calmness and perfect reverence.
We English have many false ideas about reverence :
we should bo shocked, for instance, to see a market-
woman come into church with a basket of eggs on
her arm : we think it more reverent to lock her out
till Sunday; and to surround the church with re-
spectability of iron railings, and defend it with
CHAP, x] OF THE USE OF PICTUEES 157
pacing inhabitation of beadles. I believe this to be
irreverence ; and that it is more truly reverent, when
the market-woman, hot and hurried, at six in the
morning, her head much confused with calculations
of the probable price of eggs, can nevertheless get
within church porch, and church aisle, and church
chancel, lay the basket down on the very steps of
the altar, and receive thereat so much of help and
hope as may serve her for the day’s work. In like
manner we are solemnly, but I think not wisely,
shocked at any one who comes hurriedly into church,
in any figurative way, with his basket on his arm;
and perhaps, so long as we feel it so, it is better to
keep the basket out. But, as for this one commodity
of high mental supremacy, it cannot be kept out,
for the very fountain of it is in the church wall, and
there is no other right word for it but this of Inspir-
ation; a word, indeed, often ridiculously perverted,
and irreverently used of fledgling poets and pompous
orators — no one being offended then, and yet cavilled
at when quietly used of the spirit that is in a truly
great man; cavilled at, chiefly, it seems to me, be-
cause we expect to know inspiration by the look of
it. Let a man have shaggy hair, dark eyes, a rolling
voice, plenty of animal energy, and a facility of
rhyming or sentencing, and — ^improvisatore or senti-
mentalist — we call him ‘ inspired * willingly enough;
but let him be a rough, quiet worker, not proclaim-
ing himself melodiously in anywise, but familiar with
us, unpretending, and letting all his littlenesses and
feebleness(‘s be scon, unhindered — wearing an ill-
cut coat withal, and, though he be such a man as
is only sent upon the earth once in five hundred
years, for some special human teaching, it is irrever-
ent to call him ‘ inspired ’. But, be it irreverent or
not, this word I must always use; and the rest of
what work I have here before me, is simply to prove
the truth of it, with respect to the one among these
mighty spirits whom we have just lost; who divided
his hearers, as many an inspired speaker has done
before now, into two great sects — a large and a
■158 NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE [part iv
narrow; these searching the Nature-scripture calmly,
* whether those things were so and those standing
haughtily on their Mars hill, asking, ‘ what will this
babbler say?’
CHAPTER XI
OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE
§ 1. Having now obtained, I trust, clear ideas,
up to a certain point, of what is generally right and
wrong in all art, both in conception and in workman-
ship, we have to apply these laws of right to the
particular branch of art which is the subject of our
present inquiry, namely, landscape-painting. Re-
specting which, after the various meditations into
which we have been led on the high duties and ideals
of art, it may not improbably occur to us first to
ask — whether it be worth inquiring about at all.
That question, perhaps the reader thinks, should
have been asked and answered before I had written,
or he read, two volumes and a half about it. So I
had answered it, in my own mind; but it seems
time now to give the grounds for this answer. If,
indeed, the reader has never suspected that land-
scape-painting was anything but good, right, and
healthy work, I should be sorry to put any doubt
of its being so into his mind; but if, as seems
to me more likely, he, living in this busy and perhaps
somewhat calamitous age, has some suspicion that
landscape-fainting is but an idle and empty business,
not worth all our long talk about it, then, perhaps,
he will be pleased to have such suspicion done away,
before troubling himself farther with these dis-
quisitions.
§ 2. I should rather be glad, than otherwise, that
he had formed some suspicion on this matter. If
he has at all admitted the truth of anything hitherto
said ^respecting great art, and its choices of subject,
it seems to me he ought, by this time, to be ques-
oHAP.xiJ NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE lB»
tioning with himself whether road -side weeds, old
cottages, broken stones, and such other materials,
be worthy matters for grave men to busy themselves
in the imitation of. And I should like him to probe
this doubt to the deep of it, and bring all his inis-
givings out to the broad, light, that we may see how
we are to deal with them, or ascertain if indeed they
are too well founded to be dealt with.
§ 3. And to this end I would ask him now to
imagine himself entering, for the first time in his
life, the room of the 01(1 Water-Colour Society; and
to suppose that he has entered it, not for the sake
of a quiet examination of the paintings one by one,
but in order to seize such ideas as it may generally
suggest respecting the state and meaning of modern,
as compared with elder, art. I suppose him, of
course, that he may be capable of such a comparison,
to be in some degree familiar with the different forms
in which art has developed itself within the periods
historically known to us; but never, till that moment,
to have seen any completely modern work. So pre-
pared, and so unprepared, he would, as his meas
began to arrange themselves, be first struck by the
number of paintings representing blue mountains,
clear lakes, and ruined castles or cathedrals, and he
would say to himself : ‘ There is something strange
in the mind of these modern people I Nobody ever
oared about blue mountains before, or tried to paint
the broken stones of old walls.’ And the more he
considered the subject, the more he would feel the
peculiarity; and, as he thought over the arj of Greeks
and Romans, he would still repeat, with increasing
certainty of conviction : ‘ Mountains I I remember
none. The Greeks did not seem, as artists, to know
that such things were in the world, They carved, or
variously represented, men, and horses, and beaSts,
and biSfds, and all kinds of living creatures — ^yes,
even down to cuttle-fish; and trees, in a sort of way;
but not so much as the outline of a mountain; and
as for lakes, they merely showed they knew' the
difference between salt and fresh water by the fish
im NOVELTY OF“ LANDSCAPE [part iv
ikey put into each/ Then he wopld pass on to
mediaBval art : and still he lyotild be obliged to re-
peat : ‘ Mountains I I remember none. Some care-
less and jagged arrangements of blue spires or spiked
on the horizon, and, here and there, an attempt at
representing an overhanging rock -With a hole through
it; but merely in order to divide, the light behind
some human figure. Lakes 1 No, nothing of the
kind — only blue bays of sea put in to fill up the
background when the painter could not think of any-
thing else. Broken-down buildings I No; for the
most part very complete and well-appointed build-
ings, if any; and never buildings at all, but to give
place or explanation to some circumstance of human
conduct.’ And then he would look up again to the
modern pictures, observing, with an increasing aston-
ishment, that here the human interest had, in many
oase^,. altogether disappeared. That* mountains, in-
stead of ' beirm used only as a blue ground for the
relief of the heads of saints, were themselves the
exclusive subjects of reverent contemplation; that
their ravines, and peaks, and forests, were all painted
with an appearance of as much enthusiasm as had
formerly been devoted to the dimples of beauty, or
the frowns of (asceticism; and that all the living in-
terest which was still supposed necessary to the
scene, might be supplied by a traveller in a slouched
hat, a beggar in a scarlet cloak, or, in default of
these, even by a heron or a wild duck.
§ 4. And if he could entirely divest himself of his
own modern habits of thought, and regard the sub-
jects in question with the feelings of a knight or
monk of the middle ages, it might be a question
whether those feelings would not rapidly verge to-
wards contempt. ‘ What!’ he might perhaps mutter
to himself, ‘ here are human beings spending the
whole of their lives in making pictures of bits of
stone and runlets of water, withered sticks and flying
fogs, and actually not a picture of the go48 or the
heroes I none of the saints or the martyrs f none of
the angels and demons! none of councils or battles,
CHAP. XI] NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE 161
or any other single thing wortiji the thought of a
manl Trees and clouds indeed 1 as if I should not
see as many trees as I cared to see, and more, in
the first half of my day’s journey to-morrow, or as if
it mattered to any man whether the sky were clear or
cloudy, so long as his armour did not get too hot in
the sun I’
§ 5. There can bo no question that this would
have been somewhat the tone of thought with which
either a Lacedsemonian, a soldier of Rome in her
strength, or a knight of the thirteenth century, would
have been apt to regard these particular forms of
our present art. Nor can there be any question that,
in many respects, their judpnent would have been
just. It is true that the indignation of the Spartan
or Roman would have been equally excited against
any appearance of luxurious industry ; but the mediae-
val knight would, to the full, have admitted the
nobleness of art; only he would have had it em-
ployed in decorating his church or his prayer-book,
not in imitating moors and clouds. And the feelings
of all the three would have agreed in this — that
their main ground of offence must have been the
want of seriousness and purpose in what they saw.
They would all have admitted the nobleness of what-
ever conduced to the honour of the gods, or the
power of the nation ; but they would not have under-
stood how the skill of human life could be wisely
spent in that which did no honour either to Jupiter
or to the Virgin; and which in no wise tended, ap-
parently, either to the accumulation of viealth, the
excitement of patriotism, or the advancement of
morality.
§ 6. And exactly so far forth their judgment would
be just, as the landscape-painting could indeed be
shown, for others as well as for them, to be art of
this nugator}^ kind; and so far forth unjust, as that
painting could be shown to depend upon, or culti-
vate, certain sensibilities which neither the Greek
nor mediaeval knight possessed, and which have re-
sulted from some extraordinary change in human
M. P., III. M
m NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE [part iv
nature since their time. We have no right to assume,
without very accurate examination of it, that this
change has been an ennobling one. The simple fact,
that we are, in some strange way, different from all
the great races that have existed before us, cannot
at once be received as the proof of our own great-
ness; nor can it be granted, without any question,
that we have a legitimate subject of complacency in
being under the influence of feelings, with which
neither Miltiades nor the Black Prince, neither
Homer nor Dante, neither Socrates nor St Francis,
could for an instant have sympathized.
§ 7. Whether, however, this fact be one to excite
our pride or not, it is assuredly one to excite our
deepest interest. The fact itself is certain. For
nearly six thousand years the energies of man have
pursued certain beaten paths, manifesting some con-
stancy of feeling throughout all that period, and in-
volving some fellowship at heart, among the various
nations who by turns succeeded or surpassed each
other in the several aims of art or policy. So that,
for these thousands of years, the whole human race
might be to some extent described in general terms.
Man was a creature separated from all others by his.
instinctive sense of an Existence superior to his
own, invariably manifesting this sense of the being
of a God more strongly in proportion to his own
perfectness of mind and body; and making enormous
and self-denying efforts, in order to obtain some
persuasion of the immediate presence or approval of
the Divinity. So that, on the whole, the best things
he did were done as in flie presence, or for the
honour, of his gods; and, whether in statues, to
help him to imagine them, or temples raised to
their honour, or acts of self-sacrifice done in the
hope of their love, he brought whatever was best
and skilfullest in him into their service, and lived
in a perpetual subjection to their unseen power.
Also, he was always anxious to know something de-
finite about them; and his chief books, songs, and
pictures were filled with legends about them, or
CHAP. XI] NOTELTY OF LANDSCAPE* ^ 163
specially devoted to illustration of their lives and
nature.
§ 8. Next to these gods he was always anxious to
know something about his human ancestors; fond of
exalting the memory, and telling or painting the
history of old rulers and benefactors; yet full of
an enthusiastic confidence in himself, as having in
many ways advanced beyond the best efforts of past
time; and eager to record his own doings for future
fame. He was a creature eminently warlike, placing
his principal pride in dominion; eminently beautiful,
and having great delight in his own beauty; setting
forth this beauty by every species of invention in
dress, and rendering his arms and accoutrements
superbly decorative of his form. He took, however,
very little interest in anything but what belonged to
humanity; caring in no wise for the external world,
except as it influenced his own destiny; honouring
the lightning because it could strike him, the sea
because it could drown him, the fountains because
they gave him drink, and the grass because it yielded
him seed ; but utterly incapable of feeling any special
happiness in the love of such things, or any earnest
emotion about them, considered as separate from
man; therefore giving no time to the study of them;
knowing little of herbs, except only which were
hurtful, and which healing; of stones, only which
would glitter brightest in a crown, or last the longest
in a wall; of the wild beasts, which were best for
food, and which the stoutest quarry for the hunter;
thus spending only on the lower creatures and in-
animate things his waste energy, his dullest thoughts,
his most languid emotions, and reserving all his
acuter intellect for researches into his own nature
and that of the gods; all his strength of will for
the acquirement of political or moral power; all his
sense of beauty for things immediately connected
with his own person and life; and all his deep affec-
tions for domestic or divine companionship.
Such, in broad light and brief terms, was man for
five thousand years. Such he is no longer. Let us
NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE [part iv
consider what he is now, comparing the descriptions
clause by clause.
§ 9. I. He was invariably sensible of the existence
of gods, and went about all his speculations or works
holding this as an acknowledged fact, making his
best efforts in their service. Now he is capable of
Qoing through life with hardly any positive idea on
this subject — doubting, fearing, suspecting, analys-
ing — doing everything, in fact, hut believing; hardly
ever getting quite up to that point which hitherto
was wont to be the starting point for all generations.
And human work has accordingly hardly any refer-
ence to spiritual beings, but is done either from a
patriotic or personal interest — either to benefit man-
kind, or reach some selfish end, not (I speak of
human work in the broad sense) to please the gods.
II. He was a beautiful creature, setting forth this
beauty by all means in his power, and depending
upon it for much of his authority over his fellows.
So that the ruddy cheek of David, and the ivory skin
of Atrides, and the towering presence of Saul, and
the blue eyes of Coeur de Lion, were among chief
reasons why they should be kings; and it was one
of the aims of all education, and of all dress, to make
the presence of the human form stately and lovely.
Now it has become the task of grave philosophy
partly to depreciate or conceal this bodily beauty;
and even by those who esteem it in their hearts, it
is not made one of the great ends of education : man
has become, upon the whole, an ugly animal, and is
not ashamed of his ugliness.
III. He was eminently warlike. He is now grad-
ually becoming more and more ashamed of all the
arts and aims of battle. So that the desire of
dominion which was once frankly confessed or
boasted of as a heroic passion, is now sternly repro-
bated or cunningly disclaimed.
IV. He used to take no interest in anything but
what immediately concerned himself. Now, he has
deep interest in the abstract natures of things, in-
quires as eagerly into the laws which regulate the
CHAP. XI] NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE ' 165
economy of the material world, as into those of his
own being, and manifests a passionate admiration
of inanimate objects, closely resembling, in its eleva-
tion and tenderness, the affection which he bears
to those living souls with which he is brought into
the nearest fellowship.
§ 10. It is this last change only which is to be
the subject of our present inquir^^; but it cannot
be doubted that it is closely connected with ail the
others, and that we can only thoroughly understand
its nature by considering it in this connection. For,
regarded by itself, we might, perhaps, too rashly
assume it to be a natural consequence of the pro-
gress of the race. There appears to be a diminution
of selfishness in it, and a more extended and heartfelt
desire of understanding the manner of God ’s working ;
and this the more, because one of the permanent
characters of this change is a greater accuracy in the
statement of external facts. When the eyes of men
were fixed first upon themselves, and upon nature
solely and secondarily as bearing upon their inter-
ests, it was of less consequence to them what the
ultimate laws of nature were, than what their im-
mediate effects were upon human beings. Hence
they could rest satisfied with phenomena instead of
principles, and accepted without scrutiny every fable
which seemed sufficiently or gracefully to account
for those phenomena. But so far as the eyes of men
are now withdrawn from themselves, and turned
upon the inanimate things about them, the results
cease to be of importance, and the kws become
essential.
§ 11. In these respects, it might easily appear to
us that this change was assuredly one of steady and
natural advance. But when we contemplate the
others above noted, of which it is clearly one of the
branches or consequences, we may suspect ourselves
of over-rashness in our self-congratulation, and admit
the necessity of a scrupulous analysis both of the
feeling itself and of its tendencies.
Of course a complete analysis, or anything like it.
THE PATHETIC FALLACY [paet iv
would involve a treatise on the whole history of
the world. I shall merely endeavour to note some
of the leading and more interesting circumstances
bearing on the subject, and to show sufficient
practical ground for the conclusion, that landscape-
painting is indeed a noble and useful art, though
<^ne not long known by man. I shall therefore ex-
amine, as best I can, the effect of landscape, 1st, on
the Classical mind; 2ndly, on the Medissval mind;
and lastly, on the Modern mind. But there is one
point of some interest respecting the effect of it on
any mind, which must be settled first; and this I
will endeavour to do in the next chapter.
CHAPTER XII
OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY
§ 1. German dulnece, and English affectation,
have of late much multiplied among us the use of
two of the most objectionable words that were ever
coined by the troublesomeness of metaphysicians, —
namely, ‘ Objective ’ and ‘ Subjective
No words can bo more exquisitely, and in all points,
useless; and I merely speak of them that I may,
at once and for ever, get them out of my way, and
out of my reader’s. But to get that done, they must
be explained.
The word ‘ Blue say certain philosophers, means
the sensation of colour which the human eye receives
in looking at the open sky, 6r at a bell gentian.
Now, say they farther, as this sensation can only
be felt when the eye is turned to the object, and
as, therefore, no such sensation is produced by the
object when nobody looks at it, therefore the thing,
when it is not looked at, is not blue; and thus (say
they) there are many qualities of things which depend
as much on something else as on themselves. To
be sweet, a thing must have a taster; it is only
sweet while it is being tasted, and if the tongue
CHAP. XII] THE PATHETIC FALLACY ‘ 167
had not the capacity of taste, then the sugar would
not have the quality of sweetness.
And then they agree that the qualities of things
which thus depend upon our perception of them,
and upon cur human nature as affected by them,
shall be called Subjective; and the qualities of
things which they always have, irrespective of any
other nature, as roundness or squareness, shall be
called Objective.
From these ingenious views the step is very easy
to a farther opinion, that it does not much matter
what things are in themselves, but only what they
are to us; and that the only real truth of them
is their appearance to, or effect upon, us. From
which position, with a hearty desire for mystification,
and much egotism, selfishness, shallowness, and im-
pertinence, a philosopher may easily go so far as to
believe, and say, that everything in the world de-
pends upon his seeing or thinking of it, and that
nothing, therefore, exists, but what he sees or thinks
of.
§ 2. Now, to get rid of ail these ambiguities and
troublesome words at once, be it observed that the
word ‘ Blue ’ does not mean the sensation caused
by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the
'power of producing that sensation; and this power
is always there, in the thing, whether we are there
to experience it or not, and would remain there
though there were not left a man on the face of the
earth. Precisely in the same way gunpowder has a
power of exploding. It will not explodg if you put
no match to it. But it has always the power of so
exploding, and is therefore called an explosive com-
pound, which it very positively and assuredly is,
whatever philosophy may say to the contrary.
In like manner, a gentian does not produce the
sensation of blueness if you don’t look at it. But
it has .always the power of doing so; its particles
being everlastingly so arranged by its Maker. And,
therefore, the gentian and the sky are always verily
blue, whatever philosophy may say to the contrary;
THE PATHETIC FALLXcY [paet iv
mid if you do not see them blu6 when you look at
theni) it is not their fault but yours
§ 3. Hence I would say to these philosophers : If,
instead of using the sonorous phrase, ‘ It is objec-
tively so *, you will use the plain old phrase, ‘ It
is so and if instead of the sonorous phrase, ‘ It
is subjectively so ’, you will say, in plain old Eng-
lish, ‘ It does so ’, or ‘It seems so to me you
will, on the whole, be more intelligible to your fellow-
creatures : and besides, if you find that a thing which
generally ‘ does so ’ to other people (as a gentian
looks blue to most men), does not so to you, on any
particular occasion, you will not fall into the imper-
tinence of saying, that the thing is not so, or did
not so, but you will say simply (what you will be
all the better for speedily finding out), that some-
thing is the matter with you. If you find that you
cannot explode the gunpowder, you will not declare
that all gunpowder is subjective, and all explosion
imaginary, but you will simply suspect and declare
yourself to be an ill-made match. Which, on the
whole, though there may be a distant chance of a
mistake about it, is, nevertheless, the wisest conclu-
sion you can come to until farther experiment 2 ,
1 It is quite true, that in all qualities involving sensation,
there may be a doubt whether different people receive the same
sensation from the same thing (compare Part II, Sec. I, Chap. V,
§ 6 .) ; but, though this makes such facts not distinctly explic-
able, it does not alter the facts themselves. I derive a certain
sensation, which I call sweetness, from sugar. That is a fact.
Another pert on feels a sensation, which he also calls sweetness,
from sugar. *That is also a fact. The sugar’s power to produce
these two sensations, which we suppose to be, and which are, in
all probability, very nearly the same in both of us, and, on the
whole, in the human race, is its sweetness.
2 In fact (for I may as well, for once, meet our German
friends in their own style), all that has been subjected to us on
the subject seems object to this great objection ; that the sub-
jection of all things (subject to no exceptions) to senses which
are, in us, both subject and abject, and objects of perpetual
contempt, cannot but make it our ultimate object to subject
ourselves to the senses, and to remove whatever objections
existed to such subjection. So that, finally, that which is the
CHAP.xn] TSE PATHETIC FALLACY 169
§ 4. Now, therefore, putting these tiresome and
absurd words quite out of our way, we may go on
at our ease to examine the point in question, namely,
the difference between the ordinary, proper, and true
appearances of things to us; and the extraordinary,
or false appearances, when we are under the in-
fluence of emotion, or contemplative fancy false
appearances, I say, as being entirely unconnected with
any real power or character in the object, and only
imputed to it by us.
For instance
The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould
Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold 2.
This is very beautiful, and yet very untrue. The
crocus is not a spendthrift, but a hardy plant; its
yellow is not gold, but saffron. How is it that we
enjoy so much the having it put into our heads that
it is anything else than a plain crocus?
It is an important question. For, throughout our
past reasonings about art, we have always found that
nothing could be good or useful, or ultimately plea-
subject of examination or object of attention, uniting thus in
itself the characters of subness and obness (so that, that which
has no oVmess in it should be called sub-subjective, or a
sub-subject, and that which has no subness in it should be
called upper or ober-objective, or an ob-object) ; and we
also, who suppose ourselves the objects of every arrange-
ment, and are certainly the subjects of every sensual
impression, thus uniting in ourselves, iu an obverse or
adverse manner, the characters of obness and subness, must
both become metaphysically dejected or rejected, nothing
remaining in us objective, but subjectivity, and the very objec-
tivity of the object being lost in the abyss of this subjectivity
of the Human.
There is, however, some meaning in the above sentence, if
the reader cares to make it out ; but in a pure German sentence
of the highest style there is often none whatever. See Appendix
II, ‘German Philosophy.'
1 Contemplative, in the sense explained in Part III, Sec. II,
Chap. IV.
2 Holmes (Oliver Wendell), quoted by Miss Mitford in her
Recollections of a Literary Life.
THE PATHETIC FALLACY [part iv
surable, whicli was untrue. But here is something
pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless
untrue. And what is more, if we think over our
favourite poetry, we shall find it full of this kind of
fallacy, and that we like it all the more for being so.
§ 5. It will appear also, on consideration of the
matter, that this fallacy is of two principal kinds.
Either, as in this case of the crocus, it is the fallacy
of wilful fancy, which involves no real expectation
that it will be believed; or else it is a fallacy caused
by an excited state of the feelings, making us, for
the time, more or less irrational. Of the cheating
of the fancy we shall have to speak presently; but,
in this chapter, I want to examine the nature of the
other error, that which the mind admits when afiected
strongly by emotion. Thus, for instance, in Alton
Loc/ce,
They rowed her in across the rolling foam —
The cruel, crawling foam.
The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The
state of mind which attributes to it these characters
of a living creature is one in which the reason is
unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the
same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all
our impressions of external things, which I would
generally characterize as the ‘ Pathetic fallacy ’.
§ 6. Now we are in the habit of considering this
fallacy as eminently a character of poetical descrip-
tion, and the temper of mind in which we allow it,
as one eminently poetical, because passionate. But,
I believe, if we look well iifto the matter, that we
shall find the greatest poets do not often admit this
kind of falseness — that it is only the second order of
poets who much delight in it
1 I admit two orders of poets, but no third ; and by these
two orders I mean the Creative (Shakspeare, Homer, Dante),
and Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson).
But both of these must be Jlrst-rsite in their range, though
their range is different ; and with poetry second-rate in quality
no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind. There is
quite enough of the best — much more than we can ever read
cHAP.xn] Tfe PATHETIC FALLACY l7l
Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from
the bank of Acheron ‘ as dead leaves flutter from a
bough *, he gives the most perfect image possible of
their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and
scattering agony of despair, without, however, for
an instant losing his own clear perception that these
are souls, and those are leaves; he makes no con-
fusion of one with the other. But when Coleridge
speaks of
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
he has a morbid, that is to say, a so far false, idea
about the leaf : he fancies a life in it, and will,
which there are not; confuses its powerlessness with
choice, its fading death with merriment, and the
wind that shakes it with music. Here, however,
there is some beauty, even in the morbid passage;
but take an instance in Homer and Pope. Without
the knowledge of Ulysses, Elpenor, his youngest
or enjoy in the length of a life ; and it is a literal wrong or sin
in any person to encumber us with inferior work. I have no
patience with apologies made by young pseudo-poets, ‘that
they believe there is some good in what they have written :
that they hope to do better in time &c. Soyrie good ! If
there is not all good, there is no good. If they ever hope to
do better, why do they trouble us now ? Let them rather
courageously bum all they have done, and wait for the better
days. There are few men, ordinarily educated, who in
moments of strong feeling could not strike out a poetical
thought, and afterwards polish it so as to be presentable.
But men of sense know better than so to was^e their time;
and those who sincerely love poetry, know the touch of the
master’s hand on the chords too well to fumble among them
after him. Nay, more than this ; all inferior poetry is an in-
jury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away the freshness of
rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched commonalty to
good thoughts ; and, in general, adds to the weight of human
weariness in a most woful and culpable manner. There are
few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men, which have
not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible
way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to
remember and point out the perfect words, than to invent
poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the world.
THE PATHETIC FALLACY [paet iv
follower, has fallen from an upper chamber in the
Circean palace, and has been left dead, unmissed
by his leader, or companions, in the haste of their
departure. They cross the sea to the Cimmerian
land; and Ulysses summons the shades from Tar-
tarus. The first which appears is that of the lost
Elpenor, Ulysses, amazed, and in exactly the spirit
of bitter and terrified lightness which is seen in
Hamlet 1, addresses the spirit with the simple,
startled words :
Elpenor ! How earnest thou under the shadowy darkness ?
Hast thou come faster on foot than I in iny black ship ?
Which Pope renders thus :
O, say, what angry power Elpenor led
To glide in shades, and wander with the dead ?
How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined,
Outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind?
I sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here,
either in the nimbleness of the sail, or the laziness
of the wind 1 And yet how is it that these conceits
are so painful now, when they have been pleasant to
us in the other instances?
§ 7. For a very simple reason. They are not a
'pathetic fallacy at all, for they are put into the
mouth of the wrong passion — a passion which never
could possibly have spoken thorn — agonized curiosity.
Ulysses wants to know the facts of the matter; and
the very last thing his mind could do at the moment
would be to pause, or suggest in any wise what was
not a fact.' The delay in #he first three lines, and
conceit in the last, jar upon us instantly, like the
most frightful discord in music. No poet of true
imaginative power could possibly have written the
passage 2.
1 Well said, old mole ! can’st work i’ the groimd so fast ?
2 It is worth while comparing the way a similar question is
put by the exquisite sincerity of Keats :
He wept, and his bright tears
Went trickling down the golden bow he held.
Thus, with h^f-shut, suffused eyes, he stood ;
CHAP, xii] THE PATHETIC FALLACI iV?
Therefore, we see that the spirit of truth must
guide us in some sort, even in our enjoyment of
fallacy. Coleridge’s fallacy has no discord in it, but
Pope’s has set our teeth on edge. Without farther
questioning, I .will endeavour to state the main bear-
ings of this matter.
§ 8. The temperament which admits the pathetic
fallacy, is, as I said above, that of a mind and body
in some sort too weak to deal fuljy with what is
before them or upon them; borne away, or over-
clouded, or over-dazzled by emotion; and it is a
more or less noble state, according to the force of
the emotion which has induced it. For it is no
credit to a man that he is not morbid or inaccurate
in his perceptions, when he has no strength of feel-
ing to warp them; and it is in general a sign of
higher capacity and stand in the ranks of being, that
the emotions should be strong enough to vanquish,
partly, the intellect, and make it believe what they
choose. But it is still a grander condition when the
intellect also rises, till it is strong enough to assert
its rule against, or together with, the utmost efforts
of the passions; and the whole man stands in an
iron glow, white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and
in no wise evaporating; even if he melts, losing
none of his weight.
So, then, we have the three ranks : the man who
perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to
whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose,
because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the
man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and
to whom the primrose is anything else tfian a prim-
rose : a star, or a sun, or a fairy’s shield, or a for-
saken maiden. And then, lastly, there is the man
who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and to
While from beneath some cumb’roiis boughs hard by,
With solemn step, an awful goddess came.
And there was purport in her looks for him,
Which he with eager guess began to read :
Perplexed the while, melodiously he said,
‘ Hov) cam'st thou over the unfooted sea ? ’
iu THE PATHETIC FALLACY [part iv
whom the primrose is for ever nothing else .than
itself — a little flower, apprehended in the very plain
and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever
the associations and passions may be, that crowd
around it. And, in general, these three classes may
be rated in comparative order, as the men who are
not poets at all, and the poets of the second order,
and the poets of the first; only however great a
man may be, there are always some subjects which
ought to throw him ofi his balance; some, by which
his poor human capacity of thought should be con-
quered, and brought into the inaccurate and vague
state of perception, so that the language of the
highest inspiration becomes broken, obscure, and wild
in metaphor, resembling that of the weaker man,
overborne by weaker things.
§ 9. And thus, in full, there are four classes : the
men who feel nothing, and therefore see truly; the
men who feel strongly, think weakly, and see un-
truly (second order of poets); the men wl^o feel
strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order of
poets); and the men who, strong as human crea-
tures can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger
than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what
they see is inconceivably above them. This last is
the usual condition of prophetic inspiration.
§ 10. I separate these classes, in order that their
character may be clearly understood; but of course
they are united each to the other by imperceptible
transitions, and the same mind, according to the
influences to which it is subjected, passes at diflerent
times into ihe various stated. Still, the difference
between the great and less man is, on the whole,
chiefly in this point of alterahility. That is to say,
the one knows too much, and perceives and feels
too much of the past and future, and of all things
beside and around that which immediately affects
him, to be in any wise shaken by it. His mind is
made up ; his thoughts have an accustomed current ;
his ways are stedfast; it is not this or that new
sight which will at once unbalance him. He is
CHAP.XH] THE PATHETIC fALLACY ^ i75
tender to impression at the surface, like airock with
deep moss upon it; but there is too much mass of
him to be moved. The smaller man, with the same
degree of sensibility, is at once carried off his feet;
he wants to do something he did not want to do
before; he views all the universe in a new light
through his tears; he is gay or enthusiastic, melan-
choly or passionate, as things come and go to him.
Therefore the high creative poet might even be
thought, to a great extent, impassive (as shallow
people think Dante stern), receiving indeed all feel-
ings to the full, but having a great centre of reflec-
tion and knowledge in which he stands serene, and
watches the feeling, as it were, from far off.
Dante, in his most intense moods, has entire com-
mand of himself, and can look around calmly, at all
moments, for the image or the word that will best
tell what he sees to the upper or lower world. But
Keats and Tennyson, and the poets of the second
order, are generally themselves subdued by the feel-
ings under which they write, or, at least, write as
choosing to be so, and therefore admit certain expres-
sions and modes of thought which are in some sort
diseased or false.
§ 11. Kow so long as we see that the feeling is
true, we pardon, or are even pleased by, the con-
fessed fallacy of sight which it induces : we are
pleased, for instance, with those lines of Kingsley’s,
above quoted, not because they fallaciously describe
foam, but because they faithfully describe sorrow.
But the moment the mind of the speaker becomes
cold, that moment every such expression becomes un-
true, as being for ever untrue in the external facts.
And there is no greater baseness in literature than
the habit of using these metaphorical expressions
in cool blood. An inspired writer, in full impetu-
osity of passion, may speak wisely and truly of
‘ raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own
shame but it is only the basest writer who cannot
speak of the sea without talking of ‘ raging waves
‘ remorseless floods % ‘ ravenous billows ’, (&c. ; and
Itft THE PATHETIC FALLACY [part iv
it is one of the signs of the highest power in a writer
to check all such habits of thought, and to keep his
eyes fixed firmly on the pure fact, out of which if
any feeling comes to him or his reader, he knows it
must be a true one.
To keep to the waves, I forget who it is who
represents a man in despair, desiring that his body
may be cast into the sea,
Jlliose changing mound^ and foam that j^assed away.
Might mock the eye that questioned where I lay .
Observe, there is not hero a single false, or even
overcharged, expression. ‘ Mound * of the sea wave
is perfectly simple and true; ‘ changing ’ is as
familiar as may be; ‘ foam that passed away ’, strictly
literal; and the whole line descriptive of the reality
with a degree of accuracy which I know not any
other verse, in the range of poetry, that altogether
equals. For most people have not a distinct idea
of the clumsiness and massiveness of a large wave.
The word ‘ wave ’ is used too generally of ripples and
breakers, and bendings in light drapery or grass :
it does not by itself convey a perfect image. But
the word ‘ mound ’ is heavy, large, dark, definite;
there is no mistaking the kind of wave meant, nor
missing the sight of it. Then the term ‘ changing ’
has a peculiar force also. Most people think of
waves as rising and falling. But if they look at the
sea carefully, they will perceive that the waves do
not rise and fall. They change. Change both place
and form, but they do not fajl; one wave goes on,
and on, and" still on; now lower, now higher, now
tossing its mane like a horse, now building itself
together like a wall, now shaking, now steady, but
still the same wave, till at last it seems struck by
something, and changes, one knows not how — be-
comes another wave.
The close of the line insists on tliis image, and
paints it still more perfectly — ‘ foam that passed
away ’. Not merely melting, disappearing, but pass-
ing on, out of sight, on the career of the wave.
CHAP. XII] THE PATHETIC FALLACY 177
Then, having put the absolute ocean fact as far as
he may before our eyes, the poet leaves us to feel
about it as we may, and to trace for ourselves the
opposite fact, — the image of the green mounds that
do not change, and the white and written stones
that do not pass away ; and thence to follow out also
the associated images of the calm life with the quiet
grave, and the despairing life with the fading foam :
‘ Let no man move his bones/
* As for Samaria, her king is cut off like the foam upon the
water.’
But nothing of this is actually told or pointed out,
and the expressions, as they stand, are perfectly
severe and accurate, utterly uninfluenced by the
firmly governed emotion of the writer. Even the
word ‘ mock ’ is hardly an exception, as it may stand
merely for ‘ deceive ’ or ‘ defeat ’, without implying
any impersonation of the waves.
§ 12. It may be well, perhaps, to give one or two
more instances to show the peculiar dignity pos-
sessed by all passages which thus limit their expres-
sion to the pure fact, and leave the hearer to gather
what he can from it. Here is a notable one from
the Iliad. Helen, looking from the Scaean gate of
Troy over the Grecian host, and telling Priam the
names of its captains, says at last :
I see all the other dark-eyed Greeks ; but two I cannot see,
— Castor and Pollux — whom one mother bore with me. Have
they not followed from fair Lacedaemon, or have they indeed
come in their sea-wandering ships, but now v/ill not enter
into the battle of men, fearing the shame and the scorn that
is in Me ?
Then Homer :
So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving earth
possessed, there in Laceda3mon, in the dear fatherland.
Note, here, the high poetical truth carried to the
extreme. The poet has to speak of the earth in
sadness, but he will not let that sadness affect or
M. P., III. N
THE PATHETIC FALLACY [part iv
^ange his thoughts of it. No; though Cantor and
Pollux be dead, yet the earth is our mother still,
fruitful, life-giving. These are the facts of the thing.
I see nothing else than these. Make what you will
of them.
§ 13. Take another very notable instance from
Casimir de la Vigne’s terrible ballad. La Toilette de
Constance, I must quote a few lines out of it here
and there, to enable the reader who has not the
book by him, to understand its close :
Vite, Anna, vite ; au miroir
Plus vite, Anna. Ij’heure s’avance,
Et je vais au bal ce soir
Chez I’ambassadeur de France
Y pensez vous, ils sent fan^s, ces noeuds,
Miiont d’hier, mon Dieu, com me tout passe !
Que du rdseau qui retient mes cheveux
Les glands d’azur retombent avec gr^.
Plus haut ! Plus bas ! Vous ne comprenez rien !
Que sur mon front oe saphir ^tincelle :
Vous me piquez, mal-adroite. Ah, e’est bien,
Bien, — chere Anna ! Je t’aime, je suis belle,
Celui qu’eu vain je voudrais oublier
(Anna, ma robe) il y sera, j’espere.
(Ah, fi, profane, est-ce lA mon collier ?
Quoi ! ces grains d*or b^nits par le Saint-P^re !)
II y sera ; Dieu, s’il pressait ma main,
En y pensant, k peine je respire :
P^re Anselmo doit m ’entendre demain,
Comment ferai je, Anna, pour tout lui dire ?
Vile, un coup d’oeil au miroir,
Le dernier. J’ai I’^surance
Qu’on va m’adorer ce soir
Chez I’ambassadeur de France.
Pr^s du foyer, Constance s’admirait.
Dieu ! sur sa robe il vole une 6tiucelle !
Au feu. Courez ; Quand I’espoir I’enivrait
Tout perdre ainsi ! Quoi ! Mourir,— et si belle !
L’horrible feu ronge avec volupt6
Ses bras, son sein, et I’entoure, et s’^leve,
Et sans pitie d^vore sa beautd,
Ses dixhuit ans, hdlas, et son doux r6ve
cHAP.xii] THE PATHETIC FALLACY 179^
Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour !
On disait, Pauvre Constance !
Et on dansait, jusqu’au jour,
Obez I’ambassadeur de France.
Yes, that is the fact of it. Right or wrong, the-
poet does not say. What you may think about it^
he does not know. He has nothing to do with that.-
There lie the ashes of the dead girl in her chamber.
There they danced, till the morning, at the Ambas-
sador’s of France. Make what you will of it.
If the reader will look through the ballad, of
which I have quoted only about the third part, he
will find that there is not, from beginning to end of
it, a single poetical (so called) expression, except in
one stanza. The girl speaks as simple prose as may
be; there is not a word she would not have actually
used as she w'as dressing. The poet stands by, im-
passive as a statue, recording her words just as they
come. At last the doom seizes her, and in the very
presence of death, for an instant, his own emotions
conquer him. He records no longer the facts only,
but the facts as they seem to him. The fire gnaws
with voluptuousness — without pity. It is soon past.
The fate is fixed for ever; and he retires into his
pale and crystalline atmosphere of truth. He closes
all with the calm veracity.
They said, ‘ Poor Constance ! ’
§ 14. Now in this there is the exact type of the con-
summate poetical temperament. For, be it clearly
and constantly remembered, that the greatness of a
poet depends upon the two faculties, acuteness of
feeling, and command of it. A poet is great, first in
proportion to the strength of his passion, and then,
that strength being granted, in proportion to his
government of it; there being, however, always a
point beyond which it would be inhuman and mon-
strous if he pushed this government, and, therefore,-
a point at which all feverish and wild fancy becomes
just and true. Thus the destruction of the kingdom
of Assyria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet:
THE PATHETIC FALLACY [part iv
of Israel. The fact is too great, too wonderful. It
overthrows him, dashes him into a confused element
of dreams. All the world is, to his stunned thought,
full of strange voices. ‘ Yea, the fir-trees rejoice at
thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, “ Since thou
art gone down to the grave, no teller is come up
against us So, still more, the thought of the
presence of Deity cannot be borne without this great
astonishment. ‘ The mountains and the hills shall
break forth before you into singing, and all the trees
of the field shall clap their hands.’
§ 15. But by how much this feeling is noble when
it is justified by the strength of its cause, by so
much it is ignoble when there is not cause enough
for it; and beyond all other ignobleness is the mere
affectatiopi of it, in hardness of heart. Simply bad
writing 'may almost always, as above noticed, be
known by its adoption of these fanciful metaphorical
expressions, as a sort of current coin; yet there is
even a worse, at least a more harmful, condition of
writing than this, in which such expressions are
not ignorantly and feelinglessly caught up, but, by
some master, skilful in handling, yet insincere,
deliberately wrought out with chill and studied fancy ;
as if we should try to make an old lava stream look
red-hot again, by covering it with dead leaves, or
white-hot, with hoar-frost.
When Young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on
the character of a truly good and holy man, he
permits himself for a moment to be overborne by
the feeling *80 far as to excltfim :
Where shall I find him ? angels, tell me where.
You know him ; he is near you ; point him out.
Shall I see glories beaming from his brow,
Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers ?
This emotion has a worthy cause, and is thus true
and right. But now hear the cold-hearted Pope say
to a shepherd girl :
Where’er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade ;
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade ;
Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove,
And winds shall waft it to the powers above.
OHAP.xn] The pathetic - fallacy ■ 181'
But would you sing, and rival Orpheus’ strain,
The wondering forests soon should dance again ;
The moving mountains hear the powerful call,
And headlong streams hang, listening, to their fall.
This is not, nor could it for a moment be mis-
taken for, the language of passion. It is simple
falsehood, uttered by hypocrisy; definite absurdity,
rooted in affectation, and coldly asserted in the
teeth of nature and fact. Passion will indeed go
far in deceiving itself; but it must be a strong pas-
sion, not the simple wish of a lover to tempt his
mistress to sing. Compare a very closely parallel
passage in Wordsworth, in which the lover has lost
his mistress :
Three yearis had Barbara in her grave been laid.
When thus his moan he made :
‘ Oh, move, thou cottage, from behind yon oak,
Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie.
That in some other way yon smoke
May mount into the sky.
If still behind yon pine-tree’s rugged bough,
Headlong the waterfall must come.
Oh, let it, then, be dumb —
Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now.’
Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain,
and a waterfall to be silent, if it is not to hang listen-
ing ; but with what different relation to the mind
that contemplates them I Here, in the extremity
of its agony, tho soul cries out wildly for relief,
which at the same moment it partly knows to be
impossible, but partly believes possible in a vague
impression that a miracle might be wrought to give
relief even to a less sore distress — that nature is
kind, and God is kind, and that grief is strong : it
knows not well what is possible to such grief. To
silence a stream, to move a cottage wall — one might
think it could do as much as that I
§ 16. I believe these instances are enough to illus-
trate the main point I insist upon respecting the
pathetic fallacy — ^that so far as it is a fallacy, it is
always the sign of a morbid state of mind, and com-
paratively of a weak one. Even in the most inspired
182 THE PATHETIC FALLACY [part iv
prophet it is a sign of the incapacity of his human sight
or thought to be^r what has been revealed to it. In
ordinary poetry, if it is found in the thoughts of the
poet himself, it is at once a sign of his belonging to
the inferior school; if in the thoughts of the charac-
ters imagined by him, it is right or wrong according
to the genuineness of the emotion from which it
springs; always, however, implying necessarily some
degree of weakness in the character.
Take two most exquisite instances from master
hands. The Jessy of Shenstone, and the Ellen of
Wordsworth, have both been betrayed and deserted.
Jessy, in the course of her most touching complaint,
says : ,
If through the garden’s flowery tribes I stray,
Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure,
‘ Hope not to find delight in us they say,
‘ For we are spotless, Jessy ; we are pure,’
Compare with this some of the words of Ellen :
‘ Ah, why ’, said Ellen, sighing to herself,
* Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge,
Ana nature, that is kind in woman’s breast,
And reason, that in man is wise and good,
And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge, —
Why do not these prevail for human life.
To keep two hearts together, that began
Their springtime with one love, and that have need
Of mutual pity and forgiveness, sweet
To grant, or be received ; while that poor bird —
O, come and hear him ! Thou who hast to me
Been faithless, hear him ; — though a lowly creature,
One of Ood’s simple children, >hat yet know not
The Universal Parent, how he sings !
As if he wished the firmament of heaven
Should listen, and give back to him the voice ^
Of his triumphant constancy and love.
The proclamation that he makes, how far
His darkness doth transcend our fickle light.’
The perfection of both these passages, as far as
regards truth and tenderness of imagination in the
two poets, is quite insuperable. But, of the two
characters imagined, Jessy is weaker than Ellen,
188
CHAP. XII] THE PATHETIC FALLACY
exactly in so far as something appears to her to be
in nature which is not. The flowers do not really
reproach her. God meant them to comfort her, not
to taunt her; they would do so if she saw them
rightly.
Ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slight-
est erring emotion. There is not the barest film of
fallacy in all her thoughts. She reasons as calmly
as if she did not feel. And, although the singing
of the bird suggests to her the idea of its desiring
to be heard in heaven, she does not for an instant
admit any veracity in the thought. ‘As if ’, she
says, — ‘ I know he means nothing of the kind; but
it does verily seem as if.’ The reader will find, by
examining the rest of the poem, that Ellen’s character
is throughout consistent in this clear though passion-
ate strength
It then being, I hope, now made clear to the
reader in all respects that the pathetic fallacy is
powerful only so far as it is pathetic, feeble so far
as it is fallacious, and, therefore, that the dominion
of Truth is entire,, over this, as over every other
natural and just state of the human mind, we may
go on to the subject for the dealing with which this
prefatory inquiry became necessary; and why neces-
sary, we shall see forthwith.
1 I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances,
both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just come
upon, in Maude :
For a great speculation had fail'd ;
And ever he mutter’d and madden’d, and ever wann’d with
despair ; •
And out he walk’d, when the wind like a broken worldling
wail’d.
And the jlyiny gold of the ruirCd woodlands drove thro* the
air.
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
The red rose cries, ‘ She is near, she is near ! ’
And the white rose weeps, * She is late*
The larkspur listens, ‘ I hear, I hear !*
And th^Mly whispers, ‘ / wait*
CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE [part iv
CHAPTER XIII
OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE
§ 1. Mt reason for asking the reader to give so
much of his time to the examination of the pathetic
fallacy was, that, whether in literature or in art, he
will find it eminently characteristic of the modern
mind; and in the landscape, whether of literature
or art, he will also find the modern painter endeav-
ouring to express something which ne, as a living
creatui^, imagines in the lifeless object, while the
classical and mediaeval painters were content with
expressing the unimaginary and actual qualities of
the object, itself. It will be observed that, accord-
ing to principle stated long ago, I use the words
painter arid poet quite indifferently, including in our
inquiry the landscape of literature, as well as that of
painting; and this the more because the spirit of
classical landscape has hardly bepn expressed in any
other way than by words.
§ 2. Taking, therefore, this wide field, it is surely
a very notable circumstance, to begin with, that this
pathetic fallacy is eminently characteristic of modern
painting. For instance, Keats, describing a wave,
breaking, out at sea, says of it
Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar.
Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence.
That is quite perfect, as an Sample of the modern
manner. The idea of the peculiar action with which
foam rolls down a long, large wave could not have
been given by any other words ao well as by this
‘ wayward indolence ’. But Homer would never have
written, never thought of, such words. He could
not bv any possibility have lost sight of the great
fact that the wave, from the beginning to the end
of it, do what it might, was still nothing else than
salt water; and that salt water could not be either
CHAP. XIII] CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE ' 185
wayward or indolent. He will call the waves ‘ over-
roofed ‘ full-charged *, * monstrous *, ‘ compact-
black ‘ dark-clear ‘ violet-coloured ‘ wine-
coloured and so on. But every one of these
epithets is descriptive of pure physical nature.
‘ Over-roofed ’ is the term he invariably uses of any-
thing — ^rock, house, or wave — that nods over at the
brow : the other terms need no explanation ; they
are as accurate and intense in truth as words can
be, but they never show the slightest feeling of any-
thing animated in the ocean. Bl^ck or clear, mon-
strous or violet-coloured, cold salt water it is always,
and nothing but that.
§ 3. ‘ Well, but the modern writer, by his admis-
sion of the tinge of fallacy, has given an idea of
something in the action of the wave which Homer
could not, and surely, therefore, has made a step in
advance? Also there appears to be a degree of
sympathy and feeling in the one writer, which there
is not in the other; and as it has been received for
a first principle that writers are great in proportion
to the intensity of their feelings, and Homer seems
to have no feelings about the sea but that it is black
and deep, surely in this respect also the modern
writer is the greater?’
Stay a moment. Homer had some feeling about
the sea ; a faith in the animation of it much stronger
than Keats’s. But all this sense of something
living in it, he separates in his mind into a great
abstract image of a Sea Power. He never says the
waves rage, or the waves are idle. But hg.says there
is some\^at in, and greater than, the waves, which
rages, and is idle, and that he calls a god.
§ 4. I do not think we ever enough endeavour to
enter into what a Greek’s real notion of a god was.
We are so accustomed to the modern mockeries of
the classical religion, so accustomed to hear and
see the Greek gods introduced as living personages,
or invoked for help, by men who believe neither in
them nor in any other gods, that we seem to have
infected the Greek ages themselves with the breath,
(186 CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE [pakt iv
and dimmed them with the shade, of our hypocrisy;
and are apt to think that Homer, as we know that
Pope, was merely an ingenious fabulist; nay, more
than this, that all the nations of past time were
ingenious fabulists also, to whom the universe was a
lyrical drama, and by whom whatsoever was said
^bout it was merely a witty allegory, or a graceful
lie, of which the entire upshot and consummation
was a pretty statue in the middle of the court, or at
the end of the garden.
This, at least, is one of our forms of opinion about
Greek faith; not, indeed, possible altogether to any
man of honesty or ordinary powers of thought ; but
still so venomously inherent in the modern philo-
sophy that all the pure lightning of Carlyle cannot
as yet quite burn it out of any of us. And then,
aide by side with this mere infidel folly, stands the
bitter short-sightedness of Puritanism, holding the
classical god to be either simply an idol — a block of
stone ignorantly, though sincerely, worshipped—or
else an actual diabolic or betraying power, usurping
the place of God.
§ 5. J3oth these Puritanical estimates of Greek
deity are of course to some extent true. The cor-
ruption of classical worship is barren idolatry; and
that corruption was deepened, and variously directed
to their own purposes, by the evil angels. But this
was neither the whole, nor the principal part, of
Pagan worship. Pallas was not, in the pure Greek
miind, merely a powerful piece of ivory in a temple
at Athens;^ neither was the 9 hoice of Leonidas be-
tween the ‘alternatives granted him by the oracle,
of personal death, or ruin to his country, altogether
a work of the Devil’s prompting.
§ 6. What, then, was actually the Greek god? In
what way were these two ideas of human form, and
divine power, credibly associated in the ancient heart,
so as to become a subject of true faith, irrespective
equally of fable, allegory, superstitious trust in stone,
and demoniacal influence?
It seems to me that the Greek had exactly the
187
CHAP. XIII] CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE
same instinctive feeling about the elements that we
have ourselves; that to Homer, as much as to
Casimir de la Vigne, fire seemed ravenous and piti-
less; to Homer, as much as to Keats, the sea-wave
appeared wayward or idle, or whatever else it may
be to the poetical passion. But then the Greek
reasoned upon this sensation, saying to himself : ‘ I
can light the fire, and put it out; I can dry this
water up, or drink it. It cannot be the fire or the
water that rages, or that is wayward. But it must
be something in this fire and in the water, which I
cannot destroy by extinguishing the one, or evaporat-
ing the other, any more than I destroy myself by
cutting off my finger; I was in my finger — some-
thing of me at least was; I had a power over it,
and felt pain in it, though I am still as much myself
when it is gone. So there may be a power in the
water which is not water, but to which the water is
as a body; — which can strike with it, move in it,
suffer in it, yet not be destroyed with it. This some-
thing, this great Water Spirit, I must not confuse
with the waves, which are only its body. They may
flow hither and thither, increase or diminish. That
must be indivisible — imperishable — a god. So of fire
also; those rays which I can stop, and in the midst
of which I cast a shadow, cannot be divine, nor
greater than I. They cannot feel, but there may be
something in them that feels — a glorious intelligence,
as much nobler and more swift than mine, as these
rays, which are its body, are nobler and swifter than
my flesh; — the spirit of all light, and ^truth, and
melody, and revolving hours.’
§ 7. It was easy to conceive, farther, that such
spirits should be able to assume at will a human
form, in order to hold intercourse with men, or to
perform any act for which their proper body, whether
of fire, earth, or air, was unfitted. And it would
have been to place them beneath, instead of above,
humanity, if, assuming the form of man, they could
not also have tasted his pleasures. Hence the easy
step to the more or less material ideas of deities.
^8 CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE [part iv
*which are apt at first to shock us, but which are
indeed only dishonourable so far as they represent
the gods as false and unholy. It is not the material-
ism, but the vice, which degrades the conception;
for the materialism itself is never positive or com-
plete. There is always some sense of exaltation in
the spiritual and immortal body; and of a power
proceeding from the visible form through all the
infinity of the element ruled by the particular god.
The precise nature of the idea is well seen in the
passage of the Iliad which describes the river Sca-
mander defending the Trojans against Achilles. In
order to remonstrate with the hero, the god assumes
a human form, which nevertheless is in some way
or other instantly recognized by Achilles as that of
the river-god : it is addressed at once as a river,
not as a man; and its voice is the voice of a river,
* out of the deep whirlpools * Achilles refuses to
obey its commands; and from the human form it
returns instantly into its natural or divine one, and
endeavours to overwhelm him with waves. Vulcan
defends Achilles, and sends fire against the river,
which suffers in its water-body, till it is able to bear
no more. At last even the ‘ nerve of the river \ or
‘ strength of the river ’ (note the expression), feels
the fire, and this ‘ strength of the river ’ addresses
Vulcan in supplications for respite. There is in this
precisely the idea of a vital part of the river-body,
which acted and felt, and which, if the fire reached,
it was death, just as would be the case if it touched
a vital paft of the human body. Throughout the
passage the manner of conception is perfectly clear
and consistent; and if, in other places, the exact
connection between the ruling spirit and the thing
ruled is not so manifest, it is only because it is
almost impossible for the human mind to dwell long
upon such subjects without falling into inconsisten-
1 Compare Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto i, stanza 15, and
canto V, stanza 2. In the first instance, the river-spirit is
accurately the Homeric god, only Homer would have believed
in it — Scott did not ; at least not altogether.
CHAP. XIII] CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE ' 189
cies, and gradually slat^ening its effort to grasp the
entire truth ; until the more spiritual part of it slips
from its hold, and only the human form of the god
is left, to be conceived and described aB 'fubject to
all the errors of humanity. But I do not believe that
the idea ever weakens itself down to mere aUegory.
When Pallas is said to attack and strike down Mars,
it does not mean merely that Wisdom at that moment
prevailed against Wrath. It means that there are
indeed two great spirits, one entrusted to guide the
human soul to wisdom and chastity, the other to
kindle wrath and prompt to battle. It means that
these two spirits, on the spot where, and at the
moment when, a great contest was to be decided
between all that they each governed in man, then
and there assumed human form,’ and human weapons,
and did verily and materially strike at each other,
until the Spirit of W^rath was crushed. And when
Diana is said to hunt with her nymphs in the woods,
it does not mean merely, as Wordsworth puts it,
that the poet or shepherd saw the moon and stars
glancing between the branches of the trees, and
wished to say so figuratively. It means that there
is a living spirit, to which the light of the moon
is a body; which takes delight in glancing between
the clouds’ and following the wild beasts as they
wander through the night; and that this spirit some-
times assumes a perfect human form, and in this
form, with real arrows, pursues and slays the wild
beasts, which with its mere arrows of moonlight it
could not slay; retaining, nevertheless, ajl the while,
its power and being in the moonlight, and in all
else that it rules.
§ 8. There is not the smallest inconsistency or
unspirituality in this conception. If there were, it
would attach equally to the appearance of the angels
to Jacob, Abraham, Joshua, or Manoah. In all those
instances the highest authority which governs our
own faith requires us to conceive divine power
clothed with a human form (a form so real that it
is recognized for superhuman only by its ‘ doing
pQ CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE [part iv
Wdiidrously ’), and retaining, nevertheless, sovereignty
and bmnipresence in all the world. This is pre-
cisely, as I understand it, the heathen idea of a
God; and it is impossible to comprehend any single
part of the Greek mind until we grasp this faithfully,
not endeavouring to explain it away in any wise, but
accepting, with frank decision and definition, the
tangible existence of its deities; — blue-eyed — ^white-
fleshed — human-hearted, — capable at their choice of
meeting man absolutely in his own nature — feasting
with him — ^talking with him — fighting with him, eye
to eye, or breast to breast, as Mars with Diomed; or
else, dealing with him in a more retired spirituality,
as Apollo sending the plague upon the Greeks, when
his quiver rattles at his shoulders as ho moves, and
yet the darts sent forth of it strike not as arrows,
but as plague; or, finally, retiring completely into
the material universe which they properly inhabit,
and dealing with man through that, as Scamander
with Achilles through his waves.
§ 9. Nor is there anything whatever in the various
actions recorded of the gods, however apparently
ignoble, to indicate weakness of belief in them. Very
frequently things which appear to us ignoble are
merely the simplicities of a pure and truthful age.
When Juno beats Diana about the ears with her own
quiver, for instance, we start at first, as if Homer
could not have believed that they were both real
f oddesscs. But what should Juno have done? Killed
>iana with a look? Nay, she neither wished to do
so, nor coi\ld she have done so, by the very faith
of Diana’s goddess-ship. Diana is as immortal as
herself. Frowned Diana into submission? But
Diana has come expressly to try conclusions wdth
her, and will by no means be frowned into sub-
mission. Wounded her with a celestial lance? That
sounds more poetical, but it is in reality partly more
savage, and partly more absurd, than Homer. More
savage, for it makes Juno more cruel, therefore less
divine; and more absurd, for it only seems elevated
in tone, because we use the word ‘ celestial ’, which
.191
CHAP.xm] CLASSICAX. LANDSCAPE
means nothing. What sort of a thing is a ‘ celestial ’
lance? Not a wooden one. Of what then? Of
moonbeams, or clouds, or mist. Well, therefore,
Diana’s arrows were of mist too; and her quiver,,
and herself, and Juno, with her lance, and all, vanish
into mist. Why not have said at once, if that is all
you mean, that two mists met, and one drove the
other back? That would have been rational and
intelligible, but not to talk of celestial lances. Homer
had no such misty fancy; he believed the two god-
desses were therein true bodies, with true weapons,,
on the true earth; and still 1 ask, what should Juno
have done? Not beaten Diana? No; for it is un-
lady-like. Un-English-lady-like, yes; but by no
means un-Greek-lady-like, nor even un-natural-lady-
like. If a modern lady does not beat her servant
or her rival about the ears, it is of tenor because she
is too weak, or too proud, than because she is of
purer mind than Homer’s Juno. . She will not strike
them; but she will overwork the one or slander
the other without pity; and Homer would not have
thought that one whit more goddess-like than striking-
them with her open hand.
§ 10. If, however, the reader likes to suppose that
while the Wo goddesses in personal presence thus
fought with arrow and quiver, there was also a
broader and vaster contest supposed by Homer be-
tween the elements they ruled; and that the goddess
of the heavens, as she struck the goddess of the
moon on the flushing cheek, was at the same instant
exercising omnipresent power in the heajens them-
selves, and gathering clouds, with which, filled with
the moon’s own arrows or beams, she was encumber-
ing and concealing the moon; he is welcome to this-
out-carrying of the idea, provided that he does not
pretend to make it an interpretation instead of a.
mere extension, nor think to explain away my real,,
running, beautiful, beaten Diana, into a moon behind
clouds 1.
^ Compare the exqnisite lines of Longfellow on the sunset,
in The Golden Legend:
CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE [part iv
5“ 11. It is only farther to be noted, that the Greek
Conception of Godhead, as it was much more real
than we usually suppose, so it was much more bold
and familiar than to a modern mind would be pos-
sible. I shall have something more to observe, in a
little while, of the danger of our modern habit of
endeavouring to raise ourselves to something like
comprehension of the truth of divinity, instead of
simply believing the words in which the Deity reveals
Himself to us. The Greek erred rather on the other
side, making hardly any effort t(^ conceive divine
mind as above the human; and no more shrinking
from frank intercourse with a divine being, or dread-
ing its immediate presence, than that of the simplest
of mortals. Thus Atrides, enraged at his sword’s
breaking in his hand upon the helmet of Paris, after
he had expressly invoked the assistance of Jupiter,
exclaims aloud, as he would to a king who had be-
trayed him, ‘ Jove, Father, there is not another god
more evil-minded than thou I’ and Helen, provoked
at Paris’s defeat, and oppressed with pouting shame
both for him and for herself, when Venus appears
at her side, and would lead her back to the delivered
Paris, impatiently tells the goddess to ‘ go and take
care of Paris herself.’
§^12. The modern mind is naturally, but vulgarly
and unjustly, shocked by this kind of familiarity.
Rightly understood, it is not so much a sign of mis-
understanding of the divine nature as of good under-
standing of the human. The Greek lived, in all
things, a healthy, and, in a cerj;ain degree, a perfect,
life. He had no morbid or 'sickly feeling of any
kind. He was accustomed to face death without the
slightest shrinking, to undergo all kinds of bodily
hardship without complaint, and to do what he sup-
posed right and honourable, in most cases, as a
matter of course. Confident of his own immortality.
The day is done, and slowly from the scene
The stooping aun npgathers his spent shafts,
And puts thorn back into his golden quiver.
CHAP, xiii] CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 193
and of the power of abstract justice, he expected to
be dealt with in the next world as was right, and
left the matter much in his god’s hands; but being
thus immortal, and finding in his own soul some-
thing which it seemed quite as difficult to master,
as to rule the elements, he did not feel that it was
an appalling superiority in those gods to have bodies
of water, or fire, instead of flesh, and to have various
work to do among the clouds and waves, out of his
human way; or sometimes, even, in a sort of service
to himself. Was not the nourishment of herbs and
flowers a kind of ministering to his wants? were not
the gods in some sort his husbandmen, and spirit-
servants? Their mere strength or omnipresence did
not seem to him a distinction absolutely terrific. It
might be the nature of one being to be in two places
at once, and of another to be only in one; but that
did not seem of itself to infer any absolute lordliness
of one nature above the other, any more than an
insect must be a nobler creature than a man, because
it can see on four sides of its head, and the man
only in front. They could kill him or torture him, it
w’as true; but even that not unjustly, or not for ever.
There was a fate, and a Divine Justice, greater than
they; so that if they did wrong, and he right, he
might fight it out with them, and have the better
of them at last. In a general way, they were wiser,
stronger, and better than he; and to ask counsel
of them, to obey them, to sacrifice to them, to thank
them for all good, this was well; but to be utterly
downcast before them, or not to toll them^his mind
in plain Greek if they seemed to him to be conducting
themselves in an ungodly manner — this would not
be well.
§ 13. Such being their general idea of the gods,
we can now easily understand the habitual tone of
their feelings towards what was beautiful in nature.
With us, observe, the idea of the Divinity is apt to
get separated from the life of nature; and imagining
our God upon a cloudy throne, far above the earth,
and not in the flowers or waters, we approach those
M. P., III. o
lU classical landscape [part iv
visible things with a theery that they are dead,
governed by physical laws, and so forth. But coming
to them, we find the theory fail; that they are not
dead; that, say what we choose about them, the
instinctive sense of their being alive is too strong
for us; and in scorn of all physical law, the wilfdl
iountain sings, and the kindly flowers rejoice. And
then, puzzled, and yet happy; pleased, and yet
ashamed of being so; accepting sympathy from
nature, which we do not believe it gives, and giving
sympathy to nature, which we do not believe it re-
ceives — mixing, besides, all manner of purposeful
play and conceit with these involuntary fellowships,
— we fall necessarily into the curious web of hesitat-
ing sentiment, pathetic fallacy, and wandering fancy,
which form a great part of our modern view of nature.
But the Greek never removed his god out of nature
at all; never attempted for a moment to contradict
his instinctive sense that God was everywhere. ‘ The
tree is glad ’, said he, ‘ 1 know it is; I can cut it
down; no matter, there was a nymph in it. The
water does sing \ said he; ‘I can dry it up; but
no matter, there was a naiad in it.’ But in thus
clearly defining his belief, observe, he threw it en-
tirely into a human form, and gave his faith to
nothing but the image of his own humanity. What
sympathy and fellowship he had, were always for the
spirit in the stream, not for the stream; always
for the dryad in the wood, not for the wood^ - Content
with this human sympathy, he approached the actual
waves and woody fibres with no sympathy at all.
The spirit that rulei them, he received as a plain
fact. Them, also, ruled and material, ho received
as plain facts; they, without their spirit, were dead
enough. A rose was good for scent, and a stream
for sound and coolness; for the rest, one was no
more than leaves, the other no more than water; he
could not make anything else of them; and the
divine power, which was involved in their existence,
having been all distilled away by him into an inde-
pendent Flora or Thetis, the poor leaves or waves
CHAP, xiii] CLASSICAL LAIPSCAPE m
were left, in mere cold corporealness, tp make the
most of their being discernibly red and soft, clear
and wet?,' and unacknowledged in any other power
whatsoever.
§ 14. Then, observe farther, the Greeks lived in
the midst of the most beautiful nature, and were
as familiar with blue sea, clear air, and sweet out-
lines of mountain, as we are with brick walls, black
smoke, and level fields. This perfect familiarity
rendered all such scenes of natural beauty unex-
citing, if not indifferent to them, by lulling and over-
wearying the imagination as far as it was concerned
with such things; but there was another kind of
beauty which they found it required effort to obtain,
and which, when thoroughly obtained, seemed more
glorious than any of this wild loveliness — the beauty
of the human countenance and form. This, they
perceived, could only be reached by continual exercise
of virtue; and it was in Heaven’s sight, and theirs,
all the more beautiful because it needed this self-
denial to obtain it. So they set themselves to reach
this, and having gained it, gave it their principal
thoughts, and set it off with beautiful dress as best
they might. But making this their object, they were
oblij^ed to pass their lives in simple exercise and dis-
ciplined employments. Living wholesomely, giving
themselves no fever fits, either by fasting or over-
eating, constantly in the open air, and full of animal
spirit and physical power, they became incapable
of every morbid condition of mental emotion. Un-
happy love, disappointed ambition, spirituEj despond-
ency, or any other disturbing sensation, had little
power over ihe well-braced nerves, and healthy flow
of the blood; and what bitterness might yet fasten
on them was soon boxed or raced out of a boy, and
spun or woven out of a girl, or danced out of both.
They had indeed their sorrows, true and deep, but
still, more like children’s sorrows than ours, whether
bursting into open cry of pain, or hid with shudder-
ing under the veil, still passing over the soul as
clouds do over heaven, not sullying it, not mingling
196 CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE [part iv
with it darkening it perhaps long or utterly, but
still not becoming one with it, and for the most
part passing away in dashing rain of tears, and
leaving the man unchanged; in nowise affecting, as
our sorrow does, the whole tone of his thought and
im^ination thenceforward.
« How far our melancholy may be deeper and wider
than theirs, in its roots and view, and therefore
nobler, we shall consider presently; but at all events,
they had the advantage of us in being entirely free
from all those dim and feverish sensations which
result from unhealthy state of the body. I believe
that a large amount of the dreamy and sentimental
sadness, tendency to reverie, and general pathetical-
ness of modern life results merely from derangement
of stomach; holding to the Greek life the same
relation that the feverish night of an adult does to
a child’s sleep.
§ 15. Farther. The human beauty, which, whether
in its bodily being or in imagined divinity, had be-
come, for the reasons we have seen, the principal
object of culture and sympathy to these Greeks,
was, in its perfection, eminently orderly, symmetrical,
and tender, itence, contemplating it constantly in
this state, they could not but feel a proportionate
fear of all that was disorderly, unbalanced, and
rugged. Having trained their stoutest soldiers into
a strength so delicate and lovely, that their white
flesh, with their blood upon it, should look like ivory
stained with purple ^ ; and having always around
them, in# the motion and majesty of this beauty,
enough for the full employment of their imagination,
they shrank with dread or hatred from all the rugged-
ness of lower nature — from the wrinkled forest bark,
the jagged hill-crest, and irregular, inorganic storm
of sky; looking to these for the most part as adverse
powers, and taking pleasure only in such portions of
the lower wotld as were at once conducive to the
rest and health of the human frame, and in harmony
with the laws of its gentler beauty.
1 lliad^ iv, 141.
CHAP. XIII] CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 197
§ 16. Thus, as far as I recollect, without a single
exception, every Homeric landscape, intended to be
beautiful, is composed of a fountain, a meadow,
and a shady grove. This ideal is very interestingly
marked, as intended for a perfect one, in the fifth
book of the Odyssey; when Mercury himself stops
for a moment, though on a message, to look at a
landscape ‘ which even an immortal might be glad-
dened to behold This landscape consists of a cave
covered with a running vine, all blooming into grapes,
and surrounded by a grove of alder, poplar, and sweet-
smelling cypress. Four fountains of white (foaming)
water, springing in succession (mark the orderliness),
and close to one another, flow away in different
directions, through a meadow full of violets and
parsley (parsley, to mark its moisture, being else-
where called ‘ marsh -nourished ’, and associated with
the lotus 1) ; the air is perfumed not only by these
violets and by the sweet cypress, but by Calypso’s
fire of finely chopped cedar wood, which sends a
smoke, as of incense, through the island; Calypso
herself is singing; and finally, upon the trees are
resting, or roosting, owls, hawks, and ‘ long-tongued
sea-crows Whether these last are considered as a
part of the ideal landscape, as marine singing-birds,
I know not; but the approval of Mercury appears
to be elicited chiefly by the fountains and violet
meadow.
§ 17. Now the notable things in this description
are, first, the evident subservience of the whole land-
scape to human comfort, to the foot, tha taste, or
the smell; and, secondly, that throughout the pas-
sage there is not a single figurative word expressive
of the things being in any wise other than plain
grass, fruit, or flower. I have used the term ‘ spring ’
of the fountains, because, without doubt, Homer
means that they sprang forth brightly, having their
source at the foot of the rocks (as copious fountains
nearly always have) ; but Homer does not say
‘ spring ’, he says simply flow, and uses only one
1 Iliad, ii, 776.
198 CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE [part iv
word for ‘ growing softly *, or ‘ richly of the tall
trees, the vine, and the violets. There is, however,
some expression of sympathy with the sea-birds; he
Speaks of them in precisely the same terms, as in
other places of naval nations, saying they ‘ have care
of the works of the sea.’
^ § 18. If we glance through the references to plea-
sant landscape which occur in other parts of the
Odyssey, we shall always be struck by this quiet sub-
jection of their every feature to human service, and
by the excessive similarity in the scenes. Perhaps
the spot intended, after this, to be most perfect,
may be the garden of Alcinous, where the principal
ideas are, still more definitely, order, symmetry, and
fruitfulness; the beds being duly ranged between
rows of vines, which, as well as the pear, apple,
and fig-trees, bear fruit continually, some grapes
being yet sour, while others are getting black; there
are plenty of ‘ orderly square beds of herbs chiefly
leeks, and two fountains, one running through the
garden, and one under the pavement of the palace
to a reservoir for the citizens. Ulysses, pausing to
contemplate this scene, is described nearly in the
same terms as Mercury pausing to contemplate the
wilder meadow; and it is interesting to observe,
that, in spite of all Homer’s love of symmetry, the
god’s admiration is excited by the free fountains,
wild violets, and wandering vine; but the mortal’s,
by the vines in rows, the leeks in beds, and the
fountains in pipes.
Ulysses* has, however, one' touching reason for
loving vines in rows. His father had given him fifty
rows for himself, when he was a boy, with corn
between them (just as it now grows in Italy). Prov-
ing his identity afterwards to his father, whom he
finds at work in his garden, ‘ with thick gloves on,
to keep his hands from the thorns ’, he reminds him
of these fifty rows of vines, and of the ‘ thirteen
pear-trees and ten apple-trees * which he had given
him; and Laertes faints upon his neck,
§ 19. If Ulysses had not been so much of a
CHAP, xin] CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 199
gardener^ it might have been received as a sign of
considerable feeling for landscape beauty, that, in-
tending to pay the very highest possible compliment
to the Princess Nausicaa, (and having indeed- the
moment before, gravely asked her whether she was
a goddess or not), he says that he feels, at seeing
her, exactly as he did when he saw the young palm-
tree growing at Apollo’s shrine at Delos. But I
think the taste for trim hedges and upright trunks
has its usual influence over him here also, and that
he merely means to tell the princess that she is
delightfully tall and straight.
§ 20. The princess is, however, pleased by his
address, and tells him to wait outside the town, till
she can speak to her father about him. The spot
to which she directs him is another ideal piece of
landscape, composed of a * beautiful grovo of aspen
poplars, a fountain, and a meadow near the road-
side; in fact, as nearly as possible such a scene as
meets- the eye of the traveller every instant on the
much-despised lines of road through lowland France;
for instance, on the railway between Arras and
Amiens; — scenes, to my mind, quite exquisite in
the various grouping and grace of their innumerable
po)f)lar avenues, casting sweet, tremulous shadows
over their level meadows and labyrinthine streams.
We know that the princess means aspen poplars,
because soon afterwards we find her fifty maid-
servants at the palace, all spinning, and in perpetual
motion, compared to the ‘ leaves of the tall poplar ’ ;
and it is with exquisite feeling that it is^made after-
wards 1 the chief tree in the groves of Proserpine ; its
light and quivering leafage having exactly the melan-
choly expression of fragility, faintness, and incon-
stancy which the ancients attributed to the disem-
bodied spirit 2. The likeness to the poplars by the
streams of Amiens is more marked still in the Iliad j
where the young Simois, struck by Ajax, falls to
1 Odyssey^ x, 510.
2 Compare the passage in Dante referred to above Chap.
XII, § 6.
I i«) CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE [part iv
the earth ‘ like an aspen that has grown in, an irri-
gated meadow, smooth-trunked, the soft shoots
springing from its top, which some coach-making
man has cut down with his keen iron, that he may
fit a wheel of it to a fair chariot, and it lies parching
by the side of the stream.’ It is sufficiently notable
that Homer, living in mountainous and rocky coun-
tnes, dwells thus delightedly on all the flat bits;
and so I think invariably the inhabitants of moun-
tain countries do, but the inhabitants of the plains
do not, in any similar way, dwell delightedly on
mountains. The Dutch painters are perfectly con-
tented with their flat fields and pollards : Rubens,
though he had seen the Alps, usually composes his
landscapes of a hayfield or two, plenty of pollards
and willows, a distant spire, a Dutch house with a
moat about it, a windmill, and a ditch. The Flemish
sacred painters are the only ones who introduce
mountains in the distance, as we shall see presently;
but rather in a formal way than with any appear-
ance of enjoyment. So Shakspeare never speaks of
mountains with the slightest joy, but only of low-
land flowers, flat fields, and Warwickshire streams.
And if we talk to the mountaineer, he will usually
characterize his own country to us as a ‘ pays
afire ux or in some equivalent, perhaps even more
violent, German term : but the lowland peasant does
not think his country frightful; he either will have
no ideas beyond it, or about it; or will think it
a very perfect country, and be apt to regard any
deviation frjm its general principle of flatness with
extreme disfavour ; as the Lincolnshire farmer in
Alton Loche : ‘ I’ll shaw ’ee some ’at like a field o’
beans, wool — ^none o’ this here darned ups and
downs o’ hills, to shake a body’s victuals out of
his inwards — all so vlat as a barn’s vloor, for vorty
mile on end — there’s the country to live ini’
/ i? whether this be altogether right
(though certainly not wholly wrong), but it seems
to me that there must be in the simple freshness
and fruitfulness of level land, in its pale upright
201
CHAP, xiri] CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE
trees, and gentle lapse of silent streams, enough for
the satisfaction of the human mind in general; and
I so far agree with Homer, that, if I had to educate
an artist to the full perception of the meaning of the
word ‘ gracefulness ’ in landscape, I should send
him neither to Italy nor to Greece, but simply to
those poplar groves between Arras and Amiens.
§ 21. But to return more definitely to our Homeric
landscape. When it is perfect, we have, as in the
above instances, the foliage and meadows together;
when imperfect, it is always either the foliage or the
meadow; pre-eminently the meadow, or arable field.
Thus, meadows of asphodel are prepared for the
happier dead; and even Orion, a hunter among the
mountains in his lifetime, pursues the ghosts of
beasts in these asphodel meadows after death i. So
the sirens sing in a meadow; and throughout the
Odyssey there is a general tendency to the deprecia-
tion of poor Ithaca, because it is rocky, and only fit
for goats, and has ‘ no meadows for which reason
Telemaclius refuses Atrides’s present of horses, con-
gratulating the Spartan king at the same time on
ruling over a plain which has ‘ plenty of lotus in
it, and rushes *, with corn and barley. Note this
constant dwelling on the marsh plants, or, at least,
those which grow in flat and well -irrigated land, or
beside streams : when Scamander, for instance, is
restrained by Vulcan, Homer says, very sorrow-
fully, that ‘ all his lotus, and reeds, and rushes were
burnt and thus Ulysses, after being shipwrecked
and nearly drowned, and beaten about^the sea for
many days and nights, on raft and mast, at last
getting ashore at the mouth of a large river, casts
himself down first upon its rushes, and then, in
thankfulness, kisses the ‘ corn-giving land as most
opposed, in his heart, to the fruitless and devouring
sea 2.
^ Odyssey, xi, 571. xxiv, 13. The couch of Ceres, with
Homer’s usual faithfulness, is made of a plouyked field, v,
127.
2 Odyssey, v, 398.
CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE [part tv
§ 22. In 4;his same passage, also, we £nd some
peculiar expressions of the delight which the Greeks
had in trees; for, when Ulysses first comes in sight
of land, which gladdens him, ‘ as the reviving of a
father from his sickness gladdens his children ’, it is
not merely the sight of the land itself which gives
hj^ such pleasure, but of the ‘ land and wood
Horner never throws away any words, at least in
such a place as this ; and what in another poet would
have been merely the filling up of the deficient line
with an otherwise useless word, is in him the ex-
pression of the general Greek sense, that land of any
kind was in nowise grateful or acceptable till there
was wood upon it (or corn; but the corn, in the flats,
could pot be seen so far as the black masses of
forest on the hill sides), and that, as in being rushy
and corn-giving, the low land, so in being woody,
the high land, was most grateful to the mind of
the man who for days and nights had been wearied
on the engulphing sea. And this general idea of wood
and corn, as the types of the fatness of the whole
earth, is beautifully marked in another place of the
Odyssey i, where the sailors in a desert island, having
no flour of corn to offer as a meat offering with their
sacrifices, take the leaves of the trees, and scatter
them over the burnt offering instead.
§ 23. But still, every expression of the pleasure
which Ulysses has in this landing and resting, con-
tains uninterruptedly the reference to the utility and
sensible pleasantness of all things, not to their
beauty. Af^ier his first grateful^ kiss given to the
corn-growing land, he considers immediately how he
is to pass the night; for some minutes hesitating
whether it will be best to expose himself to the
misty chill from the river, or run the risk of wild
beasts in the wood. He decides for the wood, and
finds in it a bower formed by a sweet and a wild
olive tree, interlacing their branches, or — ^perhaps
more accurately translating Homer ’s intensely graphic
expression — ‘ changing their branches with each
^ Odyssey^ xii, 357.
CHAP, xm] CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE ' 203
other ’ (it is very curious how often, in an entangle-
ment of wood, one supposes the branches to belong
to the wrong trees), and forming a roof penetrated
by neither rain, sun, nor wind. Under this bower
Ulysses collects the ‘ vain (or frusirate) outpouring of
the dead leaves ’ — another exquisite expression, used
elsewhere of useless grief or shedding of tears; and,
having got enough together, makes his bed of them,
and goes to sleep, having covered himself up with
them, ‘ as embers are covered up with ashes.’
Nothing can possibly be more intensely possessive
of the facta than this whole passage; the sense of
utter deadness and emptiness, and frustrate fall in
the leaves; of dormant life in the human body, —
the fire, and heroism, and strength of it, lulled under
the dead brown heap, as embers under ashes, and
the knitting of interchanged and close strength of
living boughs above. But there is not the smallest
apparent sense of there being beauty elsewhere than
in the human being. The wreathed wood is admired
simply as being a perfect roof for it ; the fallen leaves
only as being a perfect bed for it ; and there is literally
no more excitement of emotion in Homer, as he
describes them, nor does he expect us to be more
excited or touched by hearing about them, than if
he had been telling us how the chambermaid at the
Bull aired the four-poster, and put on two extra
blankets.
§ 24. Now, exactly this same contemplation of
subservience to human use makes the Greek take
some pleasure in rocks, when they asfyame one par-
ticular form, but one only — ^that of a cave. They
are evidently quite frightful things to him under any
other condition, and most of all if they are rough
and jagged; but if smooth, looking ‘ sculptured ’ like
the sides of a ship, and forming a cave or shelter
for him, he begins to think them endurable. Hence,
associating the ideas of rich and sheltering wood, sea,
becalmed and made useful as a port by projecting
promontories of rock, and smoothed caves or grottoes
in the rocks themselves, we get the pleasantest idea
m CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE [part iv
which the Greek could form of a landscape, next to
a marsh with poplars in it; not, indeed, if possible,
ever to be without these last : thus, in commending
the Cyclops’ country as one possessed of every per-
fection, Homer first says : ‘ They have soft marshy
meadows near the sea, and good, rich, crumbling,
plpughing-land, giving fine deep crops, and vines
always giving fruit then, ‘ a port so quiet, that
they have no need of cables in it; and at the head
of the port, a beautiful clear spring just under a
cave, and aspen poplars all round it ’
§ 25. This, it will be seen, is very nearly Homer’s
usual ‘ ideal ’ ; but, going into the middle of the
island, Ulysses comes on a rougher and less agree-
able bit, though still fulfilling certain required con-
ditions of endurableness; a ‘cave shaded with
laurels ’, which, having no poplars about it, is, how-
ever, meant to be somewhat frightful, and only fit
to be inhabited by a Cyclops. So in the country of
the Laestrygonsj Homer, preparing his reader grad-
ually for something very disagreeable, represents the
rocks as bare and ‘ exposed to the sun ’; only with
some smooth and slippery roads over them, by which
the trucks bring down wood from the higher hills.
Any one familiar with Swiss slopes of hills must
remember how often he has descended, sometimes
faster than was altogether intentional, by these same
slippery woodman’s truck roads.
Amd thus, in general, whenever the landscape is
intended to be lovely, it verges towards the ploughed
land and poplars; or, at worst, ‘to woody rocks;
but, if intended to be painful, the rocks are bare
and ‘ sharp ’. This last epithet, constantly used by
Homer for mountains, does not altogether corre-
spond, in Greek, to the English term, nor is it in-
tended merely to characterize the sharp mountain
summits; for it never would be applied simply to
the edge or point of a sword, but signifies rather
1 Odyssey, ix, 132, &;c. Hence Milton’s
From haunted spring, and dale,
Edged with poplar pale.
CHAP. XIII] CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE m
‘ harsh ‘ bitter \ or * painful being applied habit-
ually to fate, death, and in Od, ii, 333, to a halter;
and, as expressive of general objectionableness and
unpleasantness, to all high, dangerous, or peaked
mountains, as the Maleian promontory (a much
dreaded one), the crest of Parnassus, the Tereian
mountain, and a grim or untoward, though, by keep-
ing off the force of the sea, protective, rock at the
mouth of the Jardanus; as well as habitually to
inaccessible or impregnable fortresses built on
heights.
§ 26. In all this I cannot too strongly mark the
utter absence of any trace of the feeling for what we
call the picturesque, and the constant dwelling of
the writer’s mind on what was available, pleasant,
or useful; his ideas respecting all landscape being
not uncharacteristically summed, finally, by Pallas
herself; when, meeting Ulysses, who after his lon^
wandering does not recognize his own country, and
meaning to describe it as politely and soothingly as
possible, she says i : — ‘ This Ithaca of ours is, indeed,
a rough country enough, and not good for driving in;
but, still, things might be worse : it has plenty of
c^rn, and good wine, and always rain^ and soft
nourishing dew; and it has good feeding for goats
and oxen, and all manner of wood, and springs fit
to drink at all the year round.’
We shall see presently how the blundering, pseudo-
picturesque, pseudo-classical minds of Claude and
the Renaissance landscape-painters, wholly missing
Homer’s practical common sense, and (Equally incap-
able of feeling the quiet natural grace and sweetness
of his asphodel meadows, tender aspen poplars, or
running vines, fastened on his ports and caves j as
the only available features of his scenery ; and
appointed the type of ‘ classical landscape ’ thence-
forward to consist in a bay of insipid sea, and a
rock with a hole through it 2 .
1 Odyssey, xiii, 236, &c.
2 Educated, as we shall see hereafter, first in this school,
Turner gave the hackneyed composition a strange power and
freshness, in his Glaucus and Scylla. ^
CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE [part iv
§ 27. It may indeed be thought that I am assum-
ing too hastily that this was the general view of the
Greeks respecting landscape, because it was Homer’s.
But I believe the true mind of a nation, at any
period, is always best ascertainable by examining
that of its greatest men; and that simpler and truer
results will be attainable for us by simply comparing
Homer, Dante, and Walter Scott, than by attempt-
ing (what my limits must have rendered absurdly
inadequate, and in which, also, both my time and
knowledge must have failed me) an analysis of the
landscape in the range of contemporary literature.
All that I can do, is to state the general impression
which has been made upon me by my desultory
reading, and to mark accurately the grounds for this
impression, in the works of the greatest men. Now
it is quite true that in others of the Greeks, especially
in iEschylus and Aristophanes, there is infinitely
more of modem feeling, of pathetic fallacy, love of
picturesque or beautiful form, and other such ele-
ments, than there is in Homer; but then these ap-
pear to me just the parts of them which were not
Greek, the elements of their minds by which (as one
division of the human race always must be with
subsequent ones) they are connected with the modiae-
vals and moderns. And without doubt, in his in-
fluence over future mankind, Homer is eminently the
Greek of Greeks : if I were to associate any one
with him it would be Herodotus, and I believe all
I have said of the Homeric landscape will be found
equally true ^of the Herodotean, a^ assuredly it will
be of the Platonic; the contempt, which Plato some-
times expresses by the mouth of Socrates, for the
country in general, except so far as it is shady, and
has cicadas and running streams to make pleasant
noises in it, being almost ludicrous. But Homer is
the great type, and the more notable one because
of his influence on Virgil, and, through him, on
Dante, and all the after ages : and, in like manner,
if we can get the abstract of mediseval landscape
out of Dante, it will serve us as well as if we had
,read all the songs of the troubadours, and help us
CHAP. XIII] CLASSICAL LAKDSCAPE ^ 20?
to the farther changes in derivative temper, down to.
all modern time.
§ 28. I think, therefore, the reader may safely
accept the conclusions about Greek landscape which
I have got for him out of Homer; and in these he*
will certainly perceive something very different from»
the usual imaginations we form of Greek feelings..
We think of the Greeks as poetical, ideal, imagin-
ative, in the way that a modern poet or novelist is;,
supposing that their thoughts about their mythology
and world were as visionary and artificial as our a
are : but I think the passages I have quoted show
that it was not so, although it may be difficult for
us to apprehend the strange minglings in them of
the elements of faith, which, in our days, have been
blended with other parts of human nature in a totally
different guise. Perhaps the Greek mind may be
best imagined by taking, as its groundwork, that of
a good, conscientious, but illiterate, Scotch Presby-
terian Border farmer of a century or two back,
having perfect faith in the bodily appearances of
Satan and his imps; and in all kelpies, brownies,,
and fairies. Substitute for the indignant terrors in
this man’s mind, a general persuasion of the Divinity y
more or less beneficent, yet faultful, of all these
beings; that is to say, take away his belief in the
demoniacal malignity of the fallen spiritual world,
and lower, in the same degree, his conceptions of
the angelical, retaining for him the same firm faith
in both; keep his ideas about flowers and beautiful
scenery much as they are — his delighjb in regular
ploughed land and meadows, and a neat garden
(only with rows of gooseberry bushes instead of
vines), being, in all probability, about accurately
representative of the feelings of Ulysses; then, let.
the military spirit that is in him, glowing against the
Border forager, or the foe of old Flodden and Chevy -
Chase, be made more principal, with a higher sense-
of nobleness in soldiership, not as a careless excite-
ment, but a knightly duty; and increased by high
cultivation of every personal quality, not of mere-
shaggy strength, but graceful strength, aided by a..
W CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE [vajrt iv
softer climate, and educated in all proper harmony
of sight and sound : finally, instead of an informed
Christian, suppose him to have only the patriarchal
Jewish knowledge of the Deity, and even this ob-
scured by tradition, but still thoroughly solemn Mid
faithful, requiring his continual service as a priest
of burnt sacrifice and meat offering; and I think
we shall get a pretty close approximation to the vital
being of a true old Greek; some slight difference still
existing in a feeling which the Scotch farmer would
have of a pleasantness in blue hills and running
streams, wholly wanting in the Greek mind; and
perhaps also some difference of views on the subjects
of truth and honesty. But the main points, the easy,
.athletic, strongly logical and argumentative, yet
fanciful and credulous, characters of mind, would be
very similar in both; and the most serious change
in the substance of the stuff among the modifications
above suggested as necessary to turn the Scot into the
Greek, is that effect of softer climate and surrounding
luxury, inducing the practice of various forms of
polished art, the more polished, because the practical
and realistic tendency of the Hellenic mind (if my
interpretation of it be right) would quite prevent it
from diking pleasure in any irregularities of form, or
imitations of the ^eds and wildnesses of that moun-
tain nature with which it thought itself born to con-
tend! In its utmost refinement of work, it sought
eminently for orderliness; carried the principle of
the leeks in squares, and fountains in pipes, perfectly
■out in its streets and temples; formalized whatever
decoration it put into its minor architectural mould-
ings, and reserved its whole heart and power to repre-
sent the action of living men or gods, though not
omconscious , meanwhile, of
The sin^jple, the sincere deliglit ;
The habitual scene of hill and dale ;
The rural herds, the vernal gale ;
The tangled vetches’ purple bloom ;
The fragrance of the bean’s perfume, — ..
Theirs, theirs alone, who cultivate the soil,
And drink the cup of thirst, and eat the bread of toil.
CHAP. XIV] OF MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE 209
CHAPTER XIV
OP MEDIiEVAL LANDSCAPE *. FIRST, THE FIELDS
§ 1. In our examination of the spirit of classical
landscape, we were obliged to confine ourselves to
what is left to us in written description. Some inter-
esting results might indeed have been obtained by
examining the Egyptian and Ninevite landscape
sculpture, but in nowise conclusive enough to be
worth the pains of the inquiry; for the landscape of
sculpture is necessarily confined in range, and usually
inexpressive of the complete feelings of the work-
man, being introduced rather to explain the place and
circumstances of events, than for its own sake. In
the Middle Ages, however, the case is widely differ-
ent. We have wTitten landscape, sculptured land-
scape, and painted landscape, all bearing united
testimony to the tone of the national mind in almost
every remarkable locality of Europe.
§ 2. That testimony, taken in its breadth, is very
curiously conclusive. It marks the mediaeval mind
as agreeing altogether with the ancients, in holding
that flat land, brooks, and groves of aspens, compose
the pleasant places of the earth, and that rooks and
mountains are, for inhabitation, altogether to be
reprobated and detested; but as disagreeing with
the classical mind totally in this other m«>st import-
ant respect, that the pleasant flat land is never a
ploughed field, nor a rich lotus meadow good for
pasture, but garden ground covered with flowers, and
divided by fragrant hedges, with a castle in the
middle of it. The aspens are delighied in, not be-
cause they are good for ‘ coach-making men ’ to
make cart-wheels of, but because they are shady
and graceful; and the fruit-trees, covered with de-
licious fruit, especially apple and orange, occupy
still more important positions in the scenery. Sing-
M. F., in. p
210 OP MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
ing-birds — ^not ‘ sea-crows but nightingales ^ — perch
on every bough ; and the ideal occupation of mankind
is not to cultivate either the garden or the meadow,
but to gather roses and eat oranges in the one, and
ride out hawking over the other.
Finally, mountain scenery, though considered as
disagreeable for general inhabitation, is always intro-
duced as being proper to meditate in, or to encourage
communion with higher beings ; and in the ideal
landscape of daily life, mountains are considered
agreeable things enough, so that they be far enough
away.
§ 3. In this great change there are three vital points
to be noticed.
The first, the disdain of agricultural pursuits by
the nobility; a fatal change, and one gradually
bringing about the ruin of that nobility. It is ex-
pressed in the medieeval landscape by the eminently
pleasurable and horticultural character of everything;
by the fences, hedges, castle walls, and masses of
useless, but lovely flowers, especially roses. The
knights and ladies are represented always as singing,
or making love, in these pleasant places. The idea
of setting an old knight, like Laertes (whatever his
state of fallen fortune), ‘ with thick gloves on to keep
his hands from the thorns *, to prune a row of vines,
would have been regarded as the most monstrous
violation of the decencies of life; and a senator, once
detected in the home employments of Cincinnatus,
could, I suppose, thenceforward hardly have appeared
in society^
§ 4. The second vital point is the evidence of a
more sentimental enjoyment of external nature. A
Greek, wishing really to enjoy himself, shut himself
into a beautiful atrium, with an excellent dinner, and
a society of philosophical or musical friends. But a
mediasval knight went into his pleasance, to gather
1 The peculiar dislike felt by the medisevals for the sea^ is
BO interesting a subject of inquiry, that I have reserved it for
separate discussion in another work, in present preparation,
H<trhour& df England (published in 1866).
I. THE FIELDS
211
CHAP. XI V]
roses and hear the birds sing; or rode out hunting
or hawking. His evening feast, though riotous
enough sometimes, was not the height of his day’s
enjoyment'; and if the attractions of the world are
to be shown typically to him, as opposed to the horrors
of death, they are never represented by a full feast
in a chamber, but by a delicate dessert in an orange
grove, with musicians under the trees; or a ride
on a May morning, hawk on fist.
This change is evidently a healthy, and a very
interesting one.
§ 6. The third vital point is the^ marked sense that
this hawking and apple-eating are not altogether
right; that there is something else to be done in
the world than that; and that the mountains, as
opposed to the pleasant garden-ground, are places
where that other something may best bo learned;
which is evidently a piece of infinite and new respect
for the mountains, and another healthy change in
the tone of the human heart.
Let us glance at the signs and various results of
these changes, one by one.
§ 6. The two first named, evil and good as they
are, are very closely connected. The more poetical
delight in external nature proceeds just from the
fact that it is no longer looked upon with the eye
of the farmer; and in proportion as the herbs and
flowers cease to be regarded as useful, they are felt
to be charming. Leeks are not now the most im-
portant objects in the garden, but lilies and roses;
the herbage which a Greek would have looked at
only with a view to the number of horses it would
feed, is regarded by the mediaeval knight as a green
carpet for fair feet to dance upon, and the beauty
of its softness and colour is proportionally felt by
him; while the brook, which the Greek rejoiced to
dismiss into a reservoir under the palace threshold,
would be, by the mediaeval, distributed into pleasant
pools, or forced into fountains; and regarded alter-
nately as a mirror for fair faces, and a witchery to
ensnare the sunbeams and the rainbow.
212 OF MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
§ 7. And this change of feeling involves two others,
very important. When the flowers and grass were
regarded ,as means of life, and therefore (as the
thoughtful labourer of the soil must always regard
them) with the reverence due to those gifts of God
which were most necessary to his existence ; although
their own beauty was less felt, their proceeding from
the Divine hand was more seriously acknowledged,
and the herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree yielding
fruit, though in themselves less admired, were yet
solemnly connected in the heart with the reverence
of Ceres, Pomona, or Pan. But when the sense of
these necessary uses was more or less lost, among
the upper classes, by the delegation of the art of
husbandry to the hands of the peasant, the flower
and fruit, whose bloom or richness thus became a
mere source of pleasure, were regarded with less
solemn sense of the Divine gift in them; and were
converted rather into toys than treasures, chance
gifts for gaiety, rather than promised rewards of
labour; so that while the Greek could hardly have
trodden the formal furrow, or plucked the clusters
from the trellised vine, without reverent thoughts
of the deities of field and leaf, who gave the seed
to fructify, and the bloom to darken, the mediaeval
knight plucked the violet to wreathe in his lady’s
hair, or strewed the idle rose on the turf at her feet,
with little sense of anything in the nature that
gave them, but a frail, accidental, involuntary exu-
berance ; while also the Jewish sacrificial system being
now done .away, as well as the Pagan mythology, and,
with it, tne whole conception of meat offering or
firstfruits offering, the chiefest seriousnesses of all
the thoughts connected with the gifts of nature
faded from the minds of the classes of men concerned
with art and literature; while the peasant, reduced
to serf level, was incapable of imaginative thought,
owing to his want of general cultivation. But on
the other hand, exactly in proportion as the idea of
definite spiritual presence in material nature was
lost, the mysterious sense of unaccountable life in
I. THE FIELDS
213
CHAP. XIV]
the things themselves would be increased, and the
mind would instantly be laid open to all those
currents of fallacious, but pensive and pathetic
sympathy, which we have seen to be characteristic
of modern times.
§ 8. Farther : a singular difference would neces-
sarily result from the far greater loneliness of baronial
life, deprived as it was of all interest in agricultural
pursuits. The palace of a Greek leader in early
times might have gardens, fields, and farms around
it, but was sure to be near some busy city or sea-
port : in later times, the city itself became the
principal dwelling-place, and the country was visited
only to see how the farm went on, or traversed in
a line of march. Far other was the life of the
mediaeval baron, nested on his solitary jut of crag;
entering into cities only occasionally for some grave
political or warrior’s purpose, and, for the most part,
passing the years of his life in lion-like isolation;
the village inhabited by his retainers straggling in-
deed about the slopes of the rocks at his feet, but
his own dwelling standing gloomily apart, between
them and the uncompanionable clouds, commanding,
from sunset to sunrise, the flowing flame of some
calm unvoyaged river, and the ondless undulation
of the untraversable Mils. How different must the
thoughts about nature have been, of the noble who
lived among the bright marble porticoes of the Greek
groups of temple or palace — ^in the midst of a plain
covered with corn and olives, and by the shore of a
sparkling and freighted sea — ^from those ofHhe master
of some mountain promontory in the green recesses
of Northern Europe, watching night by night, from
amongst his heaps of storm-broken stpne, rounded
into towers, the lightning of the lonely sea flash
round the sands of Harlech, or the mists changing
their shapes for ever, among the changeless pines,
that fringe the crests of Jura.
§ 9. Nor was it without similar effect on the
minds of men that their journeyings and pilgrimages
became more frequent than those of the Greek, the
214 OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
extent of ground traversed in the course of them
larger, and the mode of travel more oompanionless.
To the Greek, a voyage to Egypt, or the Hellespont,
was the subject of lasting fame and fable, and the
forests of the Danube and the rocks of Sicily closed
for him the gates of the intelligible world. What
' parts of that norrow world he crossed were crossed
with fleets or armies; the camp always populous
on the plain, and the ships drawn in cautious sym-
metry around the shore. But to the medieeval knight,
from Scottish moor to Syrian sand, the world was
one great exercise ground, or field of adventure; the
staunch pacing of his charger penetrated the path-
lessness of outmost forest, and sustained the sultri-
ness of the most secret desert. Frequently alone—
or, if accompanied, for the most part only by retainers
of lower rank, incapable of entering into complete
sympathy with any of his thoughts — ^lie must have
been compelled often to enter into dim companion-
ship with the silent nature around him, and must
assuredly sometimes have talked to the wayside
flowers of his love, and to the fading clouds of his
ambition.
§ 10. But, on the other hand, the idea of retire-
ment from the world for the sake of self-mortifica-
tion, of combat with demons, or communion with
angels, and with their King — authoritatively com-
mended as it was to all men by the continual practice
of Christ Himself — gave to all mountain solitude at
once a sanctity and a terror, in^the mediaeval mind,
which werS altogether different from anything that
it had possessed in the un-Christian periods. On the
one side, there was an idea of sanctity attached to
rocky wilderpiess, because it had always been among
hills that the Deity _ had manifested Himself most
intimately to men, and to the hills that His saints
had nearly always retired for meditation, for especial
communion with Him, and to prepare for death.
Men acquainted with the history of Moses, alone at
Horeb, or with Israel at Sinai — of Elijah by the
brook Cherith, and in the Horeb cave; of the deaths
CHAP. XIV] I. THE FIELDS 215
of Moses and Aaron on Hor and Nebo; of the pre-
paration of Jephthah’s daughter for her death among
the Judea mountains; of the continual retirement
of Christ Himself to the mountains for prayer, His
temptation in the desert of the Dead Sea, His sermon
on the hills of Capernaum, His transfiguration on
the crest of Tabor, and His evening and morning
walks over Olivet for the four or five days preceding
His crucifixion — were not likely to look with irrever-
ent or unloving eyes upon the blue hills that girded
their golden horizon, or drew down upon them the
mysterious clouds out of the height of the darker
heaven. But with this impression of their greater
sanctity was involved also that of a peculiar terror.
In all this — their haunting by the memories of pro-
phets, the presences of angels, and the everlasting
thoughts and words of the Redeemer — the mountain
ranges seemed separated from the active world, and
only to be fitly approached by hearts which were
condemnatory of it. Just in so much as it appeared
necessary for the noblest men to retire to the hill-
recesses before their missions could be accomplished,
or their spirits perfected, in so far did the daily world
seem by comparison to be pronounced profane and
dangerous; and to those who loved that world, and
its work, the mountains were thus voiceful with per-
petual rebuke, and necessarily contemplated with a
kind of pain and fear, such as a man engrossed by
vanity feels at being by some accident forced to
hear a startling sermon, or to assist at a funeral
service. Every association of this kind was deepened
by the practice and the precept of the •time; and
thousands of hearts, which might otherwise have
felt that there was loveliness in the wild landscape,
shrank from it in dread, because they knew that the
monk retired to it for penance, and the hermit for
contemplation. The horror which the Greek had felt
for hills only when they were uninhabited anjd
barren, attached itself now to many of the sweetest
spots of earth ; the feeling was conquered by political
interests, but never by admiration; military ambition
216 OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
seized the frontier rock, or maintained itself in the
uuftssailable pass; but it was only for their punish-
ment, or in their despair, that men consented to
tread the crocused slopes of the Chartreuse, or the
soft glades and dewy pastures of Vailombrosa.
§ 11. In all these modifications of temper and
principle there appears much which tends to a pas-
sionate, affectionate, or awe-struck observance of the
features of natural scenery, closely resembling, in all
but this superstitious dread of mountains, our feelings
at the present day. But one character which the
medisBvals had in common with the ancients, and
that exactly the most eminent character in both,
opposed itself steadily to all the feelings we have
hitherto been examining, the admiration, namely,
and constant watchfulness, of human beauty. Ex-
ercised in nearly the same manner as the Greeks,
from their youth upwards, their countenances were
cast even in a higher mould ; for, although somewhat
less regular in feature, and affected by minglings of
Northern bluntness and stolidity of general expres-
sion, together with greater thinness of lip and shaggy
formlessness of brow, these less sculpturesque
features were, nevertheless, touched with a serious-
ness and refinement proceeding first from the modes
of thought inculcated by the Christian religion, and
secondly from their more romantic and various life.
Hence a degree of personal beauty, both male and
female, was attained in the Middle Ages, with which
classical periods could show nothing for a moment
comparable : and this beauty was set forth by the
most perfect splendour, united with grace, in dress,
which the human race have hitherto invented. The
strength of their art-genius was directed in great
part to this object; and their best workmen and
most brilliant fanciers were employed in wreathing
the mail or embroidering the robe. The exquisite
arts of enamelling and chasing metal enabled them
to make the armour as radiant and delicate as the
plumage of a tropical bird; and the most various
and vivid imaginations were displayed in the alter-
I. THE FIELDS
CHAP. XIV]
217
nations of colour, and fiery freaks of form, on shield
and crest : so that of all the beautiful things whicH
the eyes of men could fall upon, in the world about
them, the most beautiful must have been a young
knight riding out in morning sunshine, and in
faithful hope :
His broad, clear brow in sunlight glowed ;
On burnished hooves his war-horse trode ;
From underneath his helmet flowed
His coal-black curls, as on he rode.
All in the blue, unclouded weather,
Thick jewelled shone the saddle leather ;
The helmet and the helmet feather
Burned like one burning flame together ;
And the gemmy bridle glittered free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden galaxy.
§ 12. Now, the effect of this superb presence of
human beauty on men in general was, exactly as
it had been in Greek times, first, to turn their
thoughts and glances in great part away from all
other beauty but that, and to make the grass of the
field take to them always more or less the aspect of
a carpet to dance upon, a lawn to tilt upon, or a
serviceable crop of hay; and, secondly, in what at-
tention they paid to this lower nature, to make them
dwell exclusively on what was graceful, symmetrical,
and bright in colour. All that was rugged, rough,
dark, wild, unterminated, they rejected at once, as
the domain of ‘ salvage men ’ and monstrous giants :
all that they admired was tender, brigljt, balanced,
enclosed, symmetrical — only symmetrical in the
noble aud free sense : for what we moderns call
‘ symmetry or ‘ balance differs as much from
mediseval symmetry as the poise of a grocer’s scales,
or the balance of an Egyptian mummy with its hands
tied to its sides, does from the balance of a knight
on his horse, striking with the battle-axe, at the
gallop; the mummy’s balance looking wonderfully
perfect, and yet sure to be one-sided if you weigh
the dust of it — the knight’s balance swaying and
2|8 OF MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
changing like the wind, and yet as true and accurate
as the laws of life.
§ 18. And this love of symmetry was still farther
enhanced by the peculiar duties required of art at
the time; for, in order to fit a flower or leaf for
inlaying in armour, or showing clearly in glass, it
was absolutely necessary to take away its complexity,
and reduce it to the condition of a disciplined and
orderly pattern; and this the more, because, for all
military purposes, the device, whatever it was, had
to be distinctly intelligible at extreme distance. That
it should be a good imitation of nature, when seen
near, was of no moment; but it was of highest
moment that when first the knight’s banner flashed
in the sun at the turn of the mountain road, or rose,
torn and bloody, through the drift of the battle dust,
it should still be discernible what the bearing was ;
At length, the freshening western blast
Aside the shroud of battle cast ;
And first the ridge of mingled spears
Above the brightening cloud appears ;
And in the smoke the pennons flew.
As in the storm the white sea-mew ;
Then marked they, dashing broad and far
The broken billows of the war.
Wide raged the battle on the plain ;
Spears shook, and falchions flashed amain ;
Fell England’s arrow-flight like rain ;
Crests rose, and stooped, and rose again,
Wild and disorderly.
Amidst the scene of tumult, high,
They saw Lord Marmionds falcpn fly,
And stainless TunstalVs banner white ^
And Edmund Howard"^ s lion hriyht.
It was needed, not merely that they should see
it was a falcon, but Lord Marmion’s falcon; not only
a lion, but the Howards’ lion. Hence, to the one
imperative end of intelligihility , every minor resem-
blance to nature was sacrificed, and above all, the
curved^ which are chiefly the confusing lines; so
that* the straight, elongated back, doubly elongated
tail, projected and separate claws, and other recti-
CHAP. XIV] I. THE FIELDS 21^
linear unnaturalnesses of form, became the means
by which the leopard was, in midst of the mist and
storm of battle, distinguished from the dog, or the
lion from the wolf; the most admirable fierceness
and vitality being, in spite of these necessary changes
(so often shallowly sneered at by the modern work-
man), obtained by the old designer.
Farther, it was necessary to the brilliant harmony
of colour, and clear setting forth of everything, that
all confusing shadows^ all dim and doubtful lines
should be rejected : hence at once an utter denial of
natural appearances by the great body of workmen;
and a calm rest in a practice of representation which
would make either boar or lion blue, scarlet, or
golden, according to the device of the knight, or the
need of such and such a colour in that place of the
pattern ; and which wholly denied that any substance
ever cast a shadow, or was affected by any kind of
obscurity.
§ 14. All this was in its way, and for its end,
absolutely right, admirable, and delightful; and those
who despise it, laugh at it, or derive no pleasure from
it, are utterly ignorant of the highest principles of
art, and are mere tyros and beginners in the practice
of colour. But, admirable though it might be, one
necessary result of it was a farther withdrawal of
the observation of men from the refined and subtle
beauty of nature; so that the workman who first
was led to think lightly of natural beauty, as
being subservient to human, was next led to think
inaccurately of natural beauty, because he had
continually to alter and simplify it for nis practical
purposes.
§ 15. Now, asembling all these different sources of
the peculiar mediaeval feeling towards nature in one
view, we have :
Ist. Love of the garden instead of love of the farm,
leading to a sentimental contemplation of nature,
instead of a practical and agricultural one (§§ 3,
4, 6).
m OF MEMtEVAL landscape [part IV
2nd. Loss of sense of actual Divine presence, leading
to fancies of fallacious animation, in herbs,
flowers, clouds, &c. (§ 7).
3rd. Perpetual, and more or less undisturbed, com-
panionship with wild nature (§§ 8, 9).
4th. Apprehension of demoniacal and angelic pre-
sence among mountains, leading to a reverent
dread of them (§ 10).
5th. Priucipalness of delight in human beauty, lead-
ing to comparative contempt of natural objects
(§ 11 ).
0th. Consequent love of order, light, intelligibility,
and symmetry, leading to dislike of the wildness,
darkness, and mystery of nature (§ 12).
7th. Inaccuracy of observance of nature, induced by
the habitual practice of change on its forms
(§ 13 ).
From these mingled elements, we should neces-
sarily expect to find resulting, as the characteristic
of mediaeval landscape art, compared with Greek, a
far higher sentiment about it, and affection for it,
more or less subdued by still greater respect for the
loveliness of man, and therefore subordinated entirely
to human interests; mingled with curious traces of
terror, piety, or superstition, and cramped by various
formalisms — some wise and necessary, some feeble,
and some exhibiting needless ignorance and inac-
curacy.
Under these lights, let us examine the facts.
§ 16. Thq, landscape of the Middle Ages is repre-
sented in a central manner by the illuminations of
the MSS of Romances, executed about the middle of
the fifteenth century. On one side of these stands
the earlier landscape work, more or less treated as
simple decoration ; on the other, the later landscape
work, becoming more or less affected with modern
ideas and modes of imitation.
These central fifteenth-century landscapes are
almost invariably composed of a grove or two of tall
trees, a winding river, and a castle, or a garden :
I. THE FIELDS
221
CHAP. XIV]
the peculiar feature of both these last being irimness ;
the artist always dwelling especially on the fences;
wreathing the espaliers indeed prettily with sweet-
briar, and putting pots of orange-trees on the tops
of the walls, but taking great care that there shall
be no loose bricks in the one, nor broken stakes in
the other — the trouble and ceaseless warfare of the
times having rendered security one of the first ele-
ments of pleasantness, and making it impossible for
any artist to conceive Paradise but as surrounded by
a moat, or to distinguish the road to it better than
by its narrow wicket gate, and watchful porter.
§ 17. One of these landscapes is thus described by
Macaulay : ‘We have an exact square, enclosed by
the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates,
each with a convenient bridge in the centre; rect-
angular beds of flowers; a long canal neatly bricked
and railed in; the tree of knowledge, clipped like
one of the limes behind the Tuileries, standing in the
centre of the grand alley; the snake turned round it,
the man on the right hand, the woman on the left,
and the beasts drawn up in an exact circle round
them.’
All this is perfectly true: and seems in the de-
scription very curiously foolish. The only curious
folly, however, in the matter is the exquisite naivete
of the historian, in supposing that the quaint land-
scape indicates in the understanding of the painter
so marvellous an inferiority to his own; whereas, it
is altogether his own wit that is at fault, in not
comprehending that nations, whose yovjfch had been
decimated among the sands and serpents of Syria,
knew probably nearly as much about Eastern scenery
as youths trained in the schools of the modern Royal
Academy; and that this curious symmetry was en-
tirely symbolic, only more or less modified by the
various instincts which I have traced above. Mr
Macaulay is evidently quite unaware that the serpent
with the human head, and body twisted round the
tree, was the universally accepted symbol of the evil
angel, from the dawn of art up to Michael Angelo;
2^ OF MEDIiEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
that the greatest sacred artists invariably place the
man on the one side of the tree, the woman on the
other, in order to denote the enthroned and balanced
dominion about to fall by temptation ; that the beasts
are ranged (when they are so, though this is much
more seldom the case) in a circle round them, ex-
pressly to mark that they were then not wild, but
obedient, intelligent, and orderly beasts; and that
the four rivers are trenched and enclosed on the four
sides, to mark that the waters which now wander in
waste, and destroy in fury, had then for their prin-
cipal office to ‘ water the garden ’ of God. The
description is, however, sufficiently apposite and in-
teresting, as bearing upon what I have noted respect-
ing the eminent /cnce-loving spirit of the medicevals.
§ 18. Together with this peculiar formality, we
find ah infinite delight in drawing pleasant flowers,
always articulating and outlining them completely;
the sky is always blue, having only a few delicate
white clouds in it, and in the distance are blue
mountains, very far away, if the landscape is to be
simply delightful; but brought near, and divided into
quaint overhanging rocks, if it is intended to be
meditative, or a place of saintly seclusion. But the
whole of it always — flowers, castles, brooks, clouds,
and rocks — subordinate to the human figures in the
foreground, and painted for no other end than that
of explaining their adventures and occupations.
§ 19. Before the idea of landscape had been thus
far developed, the representations of it had been
purely typical; the objects which had to be sho’vvTi
in order to ''explain the scene of the event, being
firmly outlined, usually on a pure golden or chequered
colour background, not on sky. The change from
the golden background (characteristic of the finest
thirteenth-century work) and the coloured chequer
(which in like manner belongs to the finest four-
teenth) to the blue sky, gradated to the horizon,
takes place early in the fifteenth century, and is the
crisis of change in the spirit of mediaeval art. Strictly
speaking, we might divide the art of Christian times
I. THE FIELDS
CHAP. XIV]
223
into two great masses — Symbolic and Imitative; the
symbolic, reaching from the earliest periods down
to the close of the fourteenth century, and the imita-
tive from that close, to the present time; and, then,
the most important circumstance indicative of the
culminating point, or turn of tide, would be this of
the change from chequered background to sky back-
ground. The uppermost figure in Plate VII, repre-
senting the tree of knowledge, taken from a somewhat
late thirteenth -century Hebrew manuscript (Addi^
tional 11,639) in the British Museum, will at once
illustrate Mr Macaulay’s ‘ serpent turned round the
tree ’, and the mode of introducing the chequer back-
ground, and will enable the reader better to under-
stand the peculiar feeling of the period, which no
more intended the formal w’alls or streams for an
imitative representation of the Garden of Eden, than
these chequers for an imitation of sky.
§ 20. The moment the sky is introduced (and it is
curious how perfectly it is done at once, many manu-
scripts presenting, in alternate pages, chequered back-
grounds, and deep blue skies exquisitely gradated
to the horizon) — the moment, I say, the sky is intro-
duced, the spirit of art becomes for evermore changed,
and thenceforward it gradually proposes imitation
more and more as an end, until it reaches the
Turnerian landscape. This broad division into two
schools would therefore be the most true and accu-
rate we could employ, but not the most convenient.
For the great mediaeval art lies in a cluster about
the culminating point, including symbolism on one
side, and imitation on the other, and extending like
a radiant cloud upon the mountain peak of ages,
partly down both sides of it, from the year 1200 to
1500; the brightest part of the cloud leaning a little
backwards, and poising itself between 1250 and 1350.
And therefore the most convenient arrangement is
into Romanesque and barbaric art, up to 1200 —
mediseval art, 1200 to 1500 — and modern art, from
1500 downwards. But it is only in the earlier or
symbolic mediaeval art, reaching up to the close of
OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
the fourteenth century, that the peculiar modification
of natural forms for decorative purposes is seen
in its perfection, with all its beauty, and all its neces-
sary shortcomings; the minds of men being accu-
rately balanced between that honour for the superior
human form which they shared with the Greek ages,
and the sentimental love of nature which was peculiar
to their own. The expression of the two feelings will
be found to vary according to the material and place
of the art; in painting, the conventional forms are
more adopted, in order to obtain definition, and
brilliancy of colour, while in sculpture the life of
nature is often rendered with a love and faithfulness
which put modern art to shame. And in this earnest
contemplation of the natural facts, united with an
endeavour to simplify, for clear expression, the results
of that contemplation, the ornamental artists arrived
at two abstract conclusions about form, which are
highly curious and interesting.
§ 21. They saw, first, that a leaf might always be
considered as a sudden expansion of the stem that
bore it; an uncontrollable expression of delight, on
the part of the twig, that spring had come, shown in
a foimtain-like expatiation of its tender green heart
into the air. They saw that in this violent proclama-
tion of its delight and liberty, whereas the twig had,
until that moment, a disposition only to grow quietly
forwards, it expressed its satisfaction and extreme
pleasure in sunshine by springing out to right
and left. Let a 6, Fig. 1, Plate VIII, be the twig
growing forward in the direction from a to b. It
reaches the point b, and then — spring coming — not
being able to contain itself, it bursts out in every
direction, even springing backwards at first for joy;
but as this backward direction is contrary to its own
proper fate and nature, it cannot go on so long, and
the length of each rib into which it separates is
proportioned accurately to the degree in which the
proceedings of that rib are in harmony with the
natural destiny of the plant. Thus the rib c, entirely
contradictory, by the direction of his life and energy.
L THE FIELDS
226
CHAP. XIV]
of the general intentions to the tree, is but a short-
lived rib; d, not quite so opposite to his fate, lives
longer; 6, accommodating himself still more to the
spirit of progress, attains a greater length still; and
the largest rib of all is the one who has not yielded
at all to the erratic disposition of the others when
spring came, but, feeling quite as happy about the
spring as they did, nevertheless took no holiday,
minded his business, and grew straightforward.
§ 22. Fig. 6 in the same plate, which shows the
disposition of the ribs in the leaf of an American
Plane, exemplifies the principle very accurately : it
is indeed more notably seen in this than in most
leaves, because the ribs at the base have evidently
had a little fraternal quarrel about their spring holi-
day; and the more gaily -minded ones, getting to-
gether into trios on each side, have rather pooh-
poohed and laughed at the seventh brother in the
middle, who wanted to go on regularly, and attend
to his work. Nevertheless, though thus starting quite
by himself in life, this seventh brother, quietly push-
ing on in the right direction, lives longest, and makes
the largest fortune, and the triple partnerships on
the right and left meet with a very minor prosperity.
§ 23. Now if we enclose Fig. ], in Plate VIII, witli
two curves passing through the extremities of the
ribs, we get Fig. 2, the central type of all leaves.
Only this type is modified of course in a thousand
ways by the life of the plant. If it be marsh or
aquatic, instead of springing out in twigs, it is almost
certain to expand in soft currents, as th^ liberated
stream does at its mouth into the ocean. Fig. 3
(Alisma Plantago) ; if it be meant for one of the
crowned and lovely trees of the earth, it will separate
into stars, and each ray of the leaf will form a ray
of light in the crown. Fig. 5 (Horse-chestnut); and
if it be a commonplace tree, rather prudent and
practical than imaginative, it will not expand all
at once, but throw out the ribs every now and then
along the central rib, like a merchant taking his
occasional and restricted holiday. Fig. 4 (Elm).
M. P., III. Q
m OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
§ 24. Now in the bud, where all these proceed-
ings on the leaf’s part are first imagined, the young
leaf is generally (always?) doubled up in embryo, so
as to present the profile of the half -leaves, as Fig. 7,
only in exquisite complexity of arrangement; Fig. 9,
for instance, is the profile of the leaf -bud of a rose.
Hence the general arrangement of line represented
by Fig. 8 (in which the lower line is slightly curved
to express the bending life in the spine) is everlast-
ingly typical of the expanding power of joyful vegeta-
tive youth; and it is of all simple forms the most
exquisitely delightful to the human mind. It pre-
sents itself in a thousand different proportions and
variations in the buds and profiles of leaves; those
being always the loveliest in which, either by acci-
dental perspetitive of position, or inherent character
in the tree, it is most frequently presented to the
eye. The branch of bramble, for instance, Fig. 10
at the bottom of Plate VIII, owes its chief beauty
to the perpetual recurrence of this typical form; and
we shall find presently the enormous importance of
it, even in mountain ranges, though, in these, falling
force takes the place of vital force.
§ 25. This abstract conclusion the great thirteenth
century artists were the first to arrive at ; and
whereas, before their time, ornament had been con-
stantly refined into intricate and subdivided symme-
tries, they were content with this simple form as
the termination of its most important features. Fig. 3
[Plate A] , which is a scroll out of a Psalter
executed the latter half of the thirteenth century,
is a sufficient example of a practice at that time
absolutely universal.
§ 26. The second great discovery of the Middle
Ages in floral ornament, was that, in order completely
to express the law of subordination among the leaf-
ribs, two ribs were necessary, and no more^ on each
side of the leaf, forming a series of three with the
central one, because proportion is between three
terms at least.
That is to say, when they had only three ribs
PLATE Vll. : Botany of 13th Century (Apple-tree and Cyclamen)
M.P.,IIL] {face V. 226.
M n/.\
Pla'jk VllJ : 'rnK (iKowrn of Leavks
{face p. 'Z'2^
1. THE FIELDS
227
CHAP. XIV]
altogether, as a, fig. 4 [Plate B] , no law of relation
was discernible between the ribs, or the leaflets they
bore ; but b}' the addition of a third on each side, as at
b, proportion instantly was expressible, whether arith-
metical or geometrical, or of any other kind. Hence
the adoption of forms more or less approximating to
that at c (young ivy), or d (wild geranium), as the
favour! ce elements of their floral ornament, those
leaves being, in their disposition of masses, the
simplest which can express a perfect law of pro-
portion, just as the outline Fig. 7, Plate VITI, is
the simplest which can express a perfect law of
growth.
Plato IX gives, in rude outline, the arrangement of
the border of one of the pages of a missal in my
own possession, executed for tlie Countess Yolande
of Flanders in the latter half of the fourteenth
century, and furnishing, in exhaustless variety, the
most graceful examples I have ever seen of the
favourite decoration at the period, commonly now
knowm as the ‘ Ivy -leaf ’ pattern.
§ 27. In thus reducing these two everlasting laws
of beauty to their simplest possible exponents, the
mediaeval workmen were the first to discern and
establish the principles of decorative art to the end
of time, nor of decorative art merely, but of mass
arrangement in general. For the members of any
great composition, arranged about a centre, are
always reducible to the law of the ivy-leaf, the best
cathedral entrances having five porches correspond-
ing in proportional purpose to its five l(^es (three
being an imperfect, and seven a superfluous num-
ber) ; while the loveliest groups of lines attainable in
any pictorial composition are always based on the
section of the leaf -bud. Fig. 7, Plate VIII, or on the
relation of its ribs to the convex curve enclosing
them.
§ 28. These discoveries of ultimate truth are, I
believe, never made philosophically, but instinctively;
^ Married to Philip, younger son of the King of Navarre, in
1352. She died in 139h
228 OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
so that wherever we find a high abstract result of
the kind, we may be almost sure it has been the
work of the penetrative imagination, acting under the
influence of strong affection. Accordingly, when we
enter on our botanical inquiries, I shall have occasion
to show with what tender and loving fidelity to nature
the masters of the thirteenth century always traced
the leading lines of their decorations, either in missal-
painting or sculpture, and how totally in this respect
their methods of subduing, for the sake of distinct-
ness, the natural forms they loved so dearly, differ
from the iron formalisms to wdiich the Greeks, care-
less of all that was not completely divine or com-
pletely human, reduced the thorn of the acanthus,
and softness of the lily. Nevertheless, in all this
perfect and loving decorative art, we have hardly any
careful references to other landscape features than
herbs and flowers; mountains, water, and clouds
are introduced so rudely, that the representations of
them can never be received for anything else than
letters or signs. Thus the sign of clouds, in the
thirteenth century, is an undulating band, usually in
painting, of blue edged with white, in sculpture,
wrought so as to resemble very nearly the folds of a
curtain closely tied, and understood for clouds only
by its position, as surrounding angels or saints in
heaven, opening to souls ascending at the Last Judg-
ment, or forming canopies over the Saviour or the
Virgin. Water is represented by zigzag lines, nearly
resembling those employed for clouds, but distin-
guished, i^ sculpture, by having fish in it; in paint-
ing, both by fish and a more continuous blue or green
colour. And when these unvaried symbols arc asso-
ciated under the influence of that love of firm fence,
moat, and every other means of definition which we
have seen to be one of the prevailing characteristics
of the mediaeval mind, it is not possible for us to
conceive, through the rigidity of the signs employed,
what were the real feelings of the workman or
spectator about the natural landscape. We see that
the thing carved or painted is not intended in any-
CHAP. XIV] I. THE FIELDS 229
wise to imitate the truth, or convey to us the feelines
which the workman had in contemplating the truth.
He has got a way of talking about it so definite and
cold, and tells us with his chisel so calmly that the
knight had a castle to attack, or the saint a river to
cross dry-shod, without making the smallest effort
to describe pictorially either castle or river, that we
are left wholly at fault as to the nature of the
emotion with which he contemplated the real objects.
But that emotion, as the intermediate step between
the feelings of the Grecian and the Modern, it must
be our aim to ascertain as clearly as possible; and,
therefore, finding it not at this period completely
expressed in visible art, we must, as we did with
the Greeks, take up the written landscape instead,
and examine this mediaeval sentiment as we find it
embodied in the poem of Dante.
§ 29. The thing tnat must first strike us in this
respect, as wo turn our thoughts to the poem, is,
unquestionably, the formality of its landscape.
Milton’s effort, in all that he tells us of his Inferno,
is to make it indefinite; Dante’s, to make it definite.
Both, indeed, describe it as entered through gates;
but, within the gate, all is wild and fenceless with
Milton, having indeed its four rivers — the last vestige
of the mediaeval tradition — but rivers which flow
through a waste of mountain and moorland, and
by ‘ m^ny a frozen, many a fiery Alp ’. But Dante’s
Inferno is accurately separated into circles drawn
with well-pointed compasses; mapped and properly
surveyed in every direction, trenched in a thoroughly
good style of engineering from depth to depth, and
divided in the ‘ accurate middle ’ (dritto mezzo) of
its deepest abyss, into a concentric series of ten
moats and embankments, like those about a castle,
with bridges from each embankment to the next;
precisely in the manner of those bridges over Hid-
dekel and Euphrates, which Mr Macaulay thinks so
innocently designed, apparently not aware that he is
also laughing at Dante. These larger fosses are of
rock, and the bridges also; but as he goes farther
^0 OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
into detail, Dante tells us of various minor fosses
and embankments, in which he anxiously points out
to us not only the formality, but the neatness and
perfectness, of the stonework. For instance, in de-
scribing the river Phlegethon, he tells us that it was
‘paved with stone at the bottom, and at the sides,
jind over the edges of the sides ’, just as the water is
at the baths of Bulicame; and for fear we should
think this embankment at all larger than it really
was, Dante adds, carefully, that it was made just like
the embankments of Ghent or Bruges against the
sea, or those in Lombardy which bank the Brenta,
only ‘ not so high, nor so wide ’, as any of these.
And besides the trenches, we have two well-built
castles; one, like Ecbatana, with seven circuits of
wall (and surrounded by a fair stream), wherein the
great poets and sages of antiquity live; and another,
a great fortified city with walls of iron, red-hot, and
a deep fosse round it, and full of ‘ grave citizens
— the city of Dis.
§ 30. Now, whether this be in what we moderns
call ‘ good taste ’, or not, I do not mean just now
to inquire — ^Dante having nothing to do with taste,
but with the facts of what he had seen; only, so
far as the imaginative faculty of the two poets is
concerned, not that Milton’s vagueness is not the
sign of imagination, but of its absence, so far as it
is significative in the matter. For it does not follow,
because Milton did not map out his Inferno as Dante
did, that he could not have done so if he had chosen ;
only, it was the easier and less imaginative process
to leave it ^ague than to define it. Imagination is
always the seeing and asserting faculty; that which
obscures or conceals may be judgment, or feeling,
but not invention. The invention, whether good or
bad, is in the accurate' engineering, not in the fog
and uncertainty.
§ 31. When we pass with Dante from the Inferno
to Purgatory, we have indeed more light and air,
but no more liberty ; being now confined on various
ledges cut into a mountain side, with a precipice on
231
CHAP, xiv] I. THE FIELDS
one hand and a vertical wall on the other; and,
lest here also we should make any mistake about,
magnitudes, we are told that the ledges were*
eighteen feet wide and that the ascent from one*
to the other was by steps, made like those which go
up from Florence to the church of San Miniato^.
Lastly, though in the Paradise there is perfect
freedom and infinity of space, though for trenches
we have planets, and for cornices constellations, yet
there is more cadence, procession, and order among
the redeemed souls than any others; they fly, so as
to describe letters and sentences in the air, and rest
in circles, like rainbows, or determinate figures, as
of a cross and an eagle ; in which certain of the more
glorified natures are so arranged as to form the eye
of the bird, while those most highly blessed are
arranged with their white crowds in leaflets, so as
to form the image of a white rose in the midst of
heaven.
§ 32. Thus, throughout the poem, I conceive that
the first striking character of its scenery is intense
definition ; precisely the reflection of that definiteness
which we have already traced in pictorial art. But
the second point which seems noteworthy is, that
the flat ground and embanked trenches are reserved
for the Inferno; and that the entire territory of the
Purgatory is a mountain, thus marking the sense of
that purifying and perfecting influence in mountains
which we saw the mediseval mind was so ready to
suggest. The same general idea is indicated at the
very commencement of the poem, in which Dante is
overwhelmed by fear and sorrow in pasting through
a dark forest, but revives on seeing the sun touch
the top of a hill, afterwards called by Virgil ‘ the
pleasant mount — the cause and source of all delight.’
§ 33. While, however, we find this greater honour
paid to mountains, I think we may perceive a much
greater dread and dislike of woods. We saw that
Homer seemed to attach a pleasant idea, for the
^ ‘ Three times the length of the human body.’ — Purg. x, 24
2 Fury, xii, 102.
282 OF MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
most part, to forests; regarding them as sources of
wealth and places of shelter; and we find constantly
an idea of sacredness attached to them, as being
haunted especially by the gods; so that even the
wood which surrounds the house of Circe is spoken
of as a sacred thicket, or rather, as a sacred glade,
or labyrinth of glades (of the particular word used
I shall have more to say presently); and so the
wood is sought as a kindly shelter by Ulysses, in
spite of its wild beasts; and evidently regarded with
great affection by Sophocles, for, in a passage which
is always regarded by readers of Greek tragedy with
peculiar pleasure, the aged and blind OBidipus,
brought to rest in ‘ the sweetest resting-place ’ in
all the neighbourhood of Athens, has the spot de-
scribed to him as haunted perpetually by nightin-
gales, which sing ‘ in the green glades and in the
dark ivy, and in the thousand-fruited, sunless, and
windless thickets of the god ’ (Bacchus) ; the idea of
the complete shelter from wind and sun being here,
as with Ulysses, the uppermost one. After this come
the usual staples of landscape, — narcissus, crocus,
plenty of rain, olive trees; and last, and the greatest
boast of all, — ‘ it is a good country for horses, and
conveniently by the sea ’; but the prominence and
pleasantness of the thick wood in the thoughts of
the writer are very notable; whereas to Dante the
idea of a forest is exceedingly repulsive, so that, as
just noticed, in the opening of his poem, he cannot
express a general despair about life more strongly
than by saying he was lost in a wood so savage and
terrible, tha^t ‘ even to think or speak of it is distress,
— it was so bitter — it was something next door to
death ’; and one of the saddest scenes in all the
Inferno is in a forest, of which the trees are haunted
by lost souls; while (with only one exception), when-
ever the country is to be beautiful, we find ourselves
coming out into open air and open meadows.
It is quite true that this is partly a characteristic,
not merely of Dante, or of medisBval writers, but of
southern writers; for the simple reason that the
I. THE FIELDS
288
CHAP. XIV]
forest, being with them higher upon the hills, and
more out of the way than in the north, was gener-
ally a type of lonely and savage places; while in
England, the ‘ greenwood coming up to the very
walls of the towns, it was possible to be ‘ merry in
the good greenwood in a sense which an Italian
could not have understood. Hence Chaucer, Spenser,
and Shakspeare send their favourites perpetually to
the woods for pleasure or meditation; and trust their
tender Canace, or Rosalind, or Helena, or Silvia, or
Belphmbe, where Dante would have sent no one but
a condemned spirit. Nevertheless, there is always
traceable in the mediaeval mind a dread of thick
foliage, which was not present to that of a Greek;
so that, even in the north, we have our sorrowful
" children in the wood ’, and black huntsmen of the
Hartz forests, and such other wood terrors; the
principal reason for the difference being that a Greek,
being by no meaus given to travelling, regarded his
woods as so much valuable property; and if he
ever went into them for pleasure, expected to meet
one or two gods in the course of his walk, but no
banditti; while a mediaeval, much more of a solitary
traveller, and expecting to meet with no gods in the
thickets, but only with thieves, or a hostile ambush,
or a bear, besides a great deal of troublesome ground
for his horse, and a very serious chance, next to a
certainty, of losing his way, naturally kept in the
open ground as long as he could, and regarded the
forests, in general, with anything but an eye of
favour.
§ 34. These, I think, are the principal points which
must strike us, when we first broadly think of the
poem as compared with classical work. Let us now
go a little more into detail.
As Homer gave us an ideal landscape, w^hich even
a god might have been pleased to behold, so Dante
gives us, fortunately, an ideal landscape, which is
specially intended for the terrestrial paradise. And
it will doubtless be with some surprise, after our
reflections above on the general tone of Dante’s
284 OF MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE [paetiv
feelings, that we find ourselves here first entering a
forest, and that even a thick forest. But there is a
peculiar meaning in this. With any other poet than
Dante, it might have been regarded as a wanton in-
consistency. Not so with him : by glancing back to
the two lines which explain the nature of Paradise,
we shall see what he means by it. Virgil tells him,
as he enters it, ‘ Henceforward, take thine own plea-
sure for guide; thou art beyond the steep ways, and
beyond all Art — meaning, that the perfectly puri-
fied and noble human creature, having no pleasure
but in right, is past all effort, and past all rule. Art
has no existence for such a being. Hence, the first
aim of Dante, in his landscape imagery, is to show
evidence of this perfect liberty, and of the purity and
sinlessnesB of the new nature, converting pathless
ways into happy ones. So that all those fences and
formalisms which had been needed for him in imper-
fection, are removed in this paradise; and even the
pathlessness of the wood, the most dreadful thing
possible to him in his days of sin and shortcoming,
is now a joy to him in his days of purity. And as
the fencelessness and thicket of sin led to the fet-
tered and fearful order of eternal punishment, so the
fencelessness and thicket of the free virtue lead to
the loving and constellated order of eternal happi-
ness.
§ 35. This forest, then, is very like that of Colon os
in several respects — in its peace and sweetness, and
number of birds; it differs from it only in letting a
light breeze through it, being therefore somewhat
thinner than the Greek wood; the tender lines which
tell of the voices of the birds mingling with the wind,
and of the leaves all turning one way before it, have
been more or less copied by every poet since Dante’s
time. They are, so far as I know, the sweetest
passage of wood description which exists in literature.
Before, however, Dante has gone far in this wood
— that is to say, only so far as to have lost sight
of the place where he entered it, or rather, I sup-
pose, of the light under the boughs of the outside
235
CHAP, xiv] I. THE FIELDS
trees, and it must have been a very thin wood
indeed if he did not do this in some quarter of a
mile’s walk — he comes to a little river, three paces
over, which bends the blades of grass to the left,
with a meadow on the other side of it; and in this
meadow
A lady, graced with solitude, who went
Singing, and setting flower by flower apart.
By which the path she walked on was besprent
‘ Ah, lady beautiful, that basking art
In beams of love, if I may trust thy face,
Which useth to bear witness of the heart.
Let liking come on thee ', said I, ‘ to trace
Thy path a little closer to the shore,
AVhere I may reap the hearing of thy lays.
Thou mindest me, how Proserpine of yore
Appeared in such a place, what time her mother
Lost her, and slie the spring, for evermore.’
As, pointing downwards and to one another
Her feet, a ludy beudeth in the dance,
And barely setteth one before the other,
Thus, on the scarlet and the saffron glance
Of flowers, with motion maid(in-like she bent
(IL^r modest eyelids drooping and askance) ;
And there she gave my wishes their content,
Approaching, so that her sweet melodies
Arrived upon mine ear with what tliey meant.
When first she came amongst the blades, that rise,
Already wetted, from the goodly river,
She graced me by the lifting of her eyes.
(Cayley.?
§ 36. I have given this passage at length, because,
for our purposes, it is by much the most important,
not only in Dante, but in the whole circle^ of poetry.
This lady, observe, stands on the opposite side of
the little stream, which, presently, she explains to
Dante is Lethe, having power to cause forgetfulness
of all evil, and she stands just among the bent blades
of grass at its edge. She is first seen gathering
flower from flower, then ‘ passing continually the
multitudinous flowers through her hands ’, smiling
at the same time so brightly, that her first address
to Dante is to prevent him from wondering at her,
%m OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
saying, ‘ if he will remember the verse of the ninety-
second Psalm, beginning ‘ Delectastij he will know
why she is so happy.*
And turning to the verse of this Psalm we find it
written, ‘ Thou, Lord, hast made me glad through
Thy worhs, I will triumph in the works of Thy
hands or, in the very words in which Dante would
read it :
Quia delectasti me, Domine, in factura tua,
Et in operibua mauuuin Tuarum exultabo.
§ 37. Now we could not for an instant have had
any difficulty in understanding this, but that, some
way farther on in the poem, this lady is called
Matilda, and is with reason supposed by the com-
mentators to be the great Countess Matilda of the
eleventh century; not^able equally for her ceaseless
activity, her brilliant political genius, her perfect
piety, and her deep reverence for the see of Rome.
This Countess Matilda is therefore Dante’s guide in
the terrestrial paradise, as Beatrice is afterwards in
the celestial; each of them having a spiritual and
symbolic character in their glorified state, yet retain-
ing their definite personality.
The question is, then, what is the symbolic charac-
ter of the Countess Matilda, as the guiding spirit of
the terrestrial paradise? Before Dante had entered
this paradise he had rested on a step of shelving rock,
and as he watched the stars he slept, and dreamed,
and thus tells us what he saw :
A lady, young and beautiful, I dreamed.
Was passing o’er a lea ; and, as i^he came,
Methought I saw her ever and anon
Bending to cull the flowers ; and thus she sang :
‘ Know ye, whoever of my name would ask.
That I am Leah ; for my brow to weave
A garland, these fair hands unwearied ply ;
To please me at the crystal mirror, here
I deck me. But my sister Rachel, she
Before her glass abides the livelong day,
Her radiant eyes beholding, charmed no less
Than I with this delightful task. Her joy
In contemplation, as in labour mine.^
I. THE FIELDS
237
CHAP. XIV]
This vision of Rachel and Leah has been always >
and with unquestionable truth, received as a type
of the Active and Contemplative life, and as an in-
troduction to the two divisions of the paradise which
Dante is about to enter. Therefore the unwearied
spirit of the Countess Matilda is understood to
represent the Active life, which forms the felicity of
Earth; and the spirit of Beatrice the Contempla-
tive life, which forms the felicity of Heaven. This
interpretation appears at first straightforward and
certain ; but it has missed count of exactly the most
important fact in the two passages which we have to
explain. Observe : Leah gathers the flowers to
decorate herself, and delights in Her Own Labour.
Rachel sits silent, contemplating herself, and delights
in Her Own Image. Those are the types of the
Unglorified Active and Contemplative powers of Man.
But Beatrice and Matilda are the same powers,
Glorified. And how are they Glorified? Leah took
delight in her own labour; but Matilda — ' in operibus
rnanuum Tuarum. ’ — in God's labour: Rachel in the
sight of her own face; Beatrice in the sight of
God's face.
§ 38. And thus, when afterwards Dante sees
Beatrice on her throne, and prays her that, when he
himself shall die, she would receive him with kind-
ness, Beatrice merely looks down for an instant, and
answers with a single smile, then ‘ towards the
eternal fountain turns.’
Therefore it is evident that Dante distinguishes in
both cases, not between earth and heaven, but be-
tween perfect and imperfect happiness, •whether in
earth or heaven. The active life which has only the
service of man for its end, and therefore gathers
flowers, with Leah, for its own decoration, is indeed
happy, but not perfectly so; it has only the happi-
ness of the dream, belonging essentially to the dream
of human life, and passing away with it. But the
active life which labours for the more and more
discovery of God’s work, is perfectly happy, and
is the life of the terrestrial paradise, being a true
m OF MEDI-EVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
foretaste of heaven, and beginning in earth, as
heaven’s vestibule. So also the contemplative life
which is concerned with human feeling and thought
and beauty — the life which is in earthly poetry and
imagery of noble earthly emotion — is happy, but it is
the happiness of the dream; the contemplative life
which has God’s person and love in Christ for its
' object, has the happiness of eternity. But because
this higher happiness is also begun here on earth,
Beatrice descends to earth; and when revealed to
Dante first, he sees the image of the twofold person-
ality of Christ reflected in her eyes; as the flowers,
which are, to the mediaeval heart, the chief work of
God, are for ever passing through Matilda’s hands.
§ 39. Now, therefore, we see that Dante, as the
great prophetic exponent of the heart of the Middle
Ages, has, by the lips of the spirit of Matilda,
declared the mediasval faith, — that all perfect active
life was * the expression of man’s delight in God's
work' ; and that all their political and warlike energy,
as fully shown in the mortal life of Matilda, was
yet inferior and impure — ^the energy of the dream
— compared with that which on the opposite bank of
Lethe stood ‘ choosing flower from flower ’. And
what joy and peace there were in this work is
marked by Matilda’s being the person who draws
Dante through the stream of Lethe, so as to make
him forget all sin, and all sorrow: throwing her
arms round him, she plunges his head under the
waves of it; then draws him through, crying to
him, ‘ hold me, hold me ’ (tiemmi, tiemmi), and so
presents him, thus bathed, free' from all painful
memory, at the feet of the spirit of the more heavenly
contemplation.
§ 40. The reader will, I think, now see, with
sufficient distinctness, why I called this passage the
most important, for our present purposes, in the
whole circle of poetry. For it contains the first great
confession of the discovery by the human race (I
mean as a matter of experience, not of revelation),
that their happiness was not in themselves, and that
cflAP. xiv] I. THE FIELDS 239
their labour was not to have their own service as
its chief end. It embodies in a few syllables the
sealing difference between the Greek and the me-
diaeval, in that the former sought the flower and herb
for his own uses, the latter for God’s honour; the
former, primarily and on principle, contemplated his
own beauty and the workings of his own mind, and
the latter, primarily and on principle, contemplated
Christ’s beauty and the workings of the mind of
Christ.
§ 41. I will not at present follow up this subject
any farther; it being enough that we have thus got
to the root of it, and have a great declaration of the
central mediseval purpose, whereto we may return
for solution of all future questions. I would only,
therefore, dosire the reader now to compare The
Stones of Venice ^ vol. i, chap, xx, §§ 15, 16; The
Seven Lamps of Architecture, chap, iv, § 3; and
the second volume of this work. Chap. II, §§ 9, 10,
and Chap. Ill, § 10; that he may, in these several
places, observe how gradually our conclusions are
knitting themselves together as wo are able to deter-
mine more and more, of the successive questions that
come before us : and, finally, to compare the two
interesting passages in Wordsworth, which, without
any memory of Dante, nevertheless, as if by some
special ordaining, describe in matters of modern life
exactly the soothing or felicitous powers of the two
active spirits of Dante — Leah and Matilda, Excur-
sion, book V, line 608 to 625, and book vi, line 102
to 214.
§ 42. Having thus received from Dantd this great
lesson, as to the spirit in which mediaeval landscape
is to be understood, what else we have to note
respecting it, as seen in his poem, will be com-
paratively straightforward and easy. And first, we
have to observe the place occupied in his mind by
colour. It has already been shown, in the Stones of
Venice, vol. ii, chap, v, §§ 30-34, that colour is the
most sacred element of all visible things. Hence,
as the mediaeval mind contemplated them first for
S40 OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
their sacredness, we should, beforehand, expect that
the first thing it would seize would be the colour;
and that w^e should find its expressions and render-
ings of colour infinitely more loving and accurate
than among the Greeks.
§ 43. Accordingly, the Greek sense of colour seems
to have been so comparatively dim and uncertain,
that it is almost impossible to ascertain what the
real idea was which they attached to any word allud-
ing to hue : and above all, colour, though pleasant
to their eyes, as to those of all human beings, seems
never to have been impressive to their feelings.
They liked purple, on the whole, the best; but there
was no sense of cheerfulness or pleasantness in one
colour, and gloom in another, such as the mediae vals
had.
For instance, when Achilles goes, in great anger
and sorrow, to complain to Thetis of the scorn done
him by Agamemnon, the sea appears to him ‘ wine-
coloured ’. One might think this meant that the
sea looked dark and reddish -purple to him, in a kind
of sympathy with his anger. But we turn to the
passage of Sophocles, which has been above quoted,
— a passage peculiarly intended to express peace and
rest-— and we find that the birds sing among ‘ wine-
coloured ’ ivy. The uncertainty of conception of
the hue itself, and entire absence of expressive
character in the word, could hardly be more clearly
manifested.
§ 44. Again : I said the Greek liked purple, as a
general source of enjoyment, better than any other
colour. So he did; and so all healthy persons who
have eye for colour, and are unprejudiced about it,
do; and will to the end of time, for a reason presently
to be noted. But so far was this instinctive prefer-
ence for purple from giving, in the Greek mind, any
consistently cheerful or sacred association to the
colour, that Homer constantly calls death ‘ purple
death ’.
§ 45, Again : in the passage of Sophocles, so often
spoken of, I said there was some difficulty respecting
CHAP, xiv] I. THE FIELDS 241
a word often translated * thickets I believe, my-
self, it means glades; literally, ‘ going places ’ in tne
woods — that is to say, places where, either naturally
or by force, the trees separate, so as to give some
accessible avenue. Now, Sophocles tells us the birds
sang in these ‘ green going places ’ ; and we take up
the expression gratefully, thinking the old Greek per-
ceived and enjoyed, as wo do, the sweet fall of the
eminently green light through the leaves when they
are a little thinner- than in the heart of the wood.
But we turn to the tragedy of Ajax, and are much
sliaken in our conclusion about Ihe meaning of the
word, when we are told that the body of Ajax is
to lie unburied, and be eaten by sea-birds on the
‘ green sand ’. The formation, geologically distin-
guished by that title, was certainly not known to
Sophocles; and the only conclusion which, it seems
to me, we can come to under the circumstances, —
assuming Ariel’s ^ authority as to the colour of pretty
sand, and the ancient mariner’s (or, rather, his
hearer’s 2) as to the colour of ugly sand, to be con-
clusive — is that Sophocles really did not know green
from yellow or brown.
§ 46. Now, without going out of the terrestrial
paradise, in which Dante last left us, we shall be
able at once to compare with this Greek incertitude
the precision of the mediseval eye for colour. Some
three arrowfiights farther up into the wood we come
to a tall tree, which is at first barren, but, after
some little time, visibly opens into flowers, of a colour
‘ less than that of roses, but more than that of
violets ’. *
It certainly would not be possible, in words, to
come nearer to the definition of the exact hue which
Dante meant — that of the apple-blossom. Had he
employed any simple colour-phrase, as a ‘ pale pink ’,
or ‘ violet-pink ’, or any other such combined ex-
1 Come unto these yellow sands.
2 And tbou art long, and lank, and brown^
As is the ribbed sea sand.
M. p. , III.
R
U2 OF MEDIiEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
pression, he still could not have completely got at
the delicacy of the hue ; he might perhaps have indi-
cated its kind, but not its tenderness; but by taking
the rose-leaf as the type of the delicate red, and
then enfeebling this with the violet grey, he gets, as
closely as language can carry him, to the complete
rendering of the vision, though it is evidently felt
by him to be in its perfect beauty ineffable; and
rightly so felt, for of all lovely things which grace
the spring time in our fair temperate zone, I am
not sure but this blossoming of the apple-tree is the
fairest. At all events, I find it associated in my
mind with four other kinds of colour, certainly prin-
cipal among the gifts of the northern earth, namely :
1st. Bell gentians growing close together, mixed with
lilies of the valley, on the Jura pastures.
2nd. Alpine roses with dew upon them, under low
rays of morning sunshine, touching the tops of
the flowers.
3rd, Bell heather in mass, in full light, at sunset.
4th. White narcissus (red-contred) in mass, on the
Vevay pastures, in sunshine after rain.
And I know not where in the group to place the
wreaths of apple-blossom, in the Vevay orchards,
with the far-off blue of the lake of Geneva seen
between the flow^ers.
A Greek, however, would have regarded this
blossom simply with the eyes of a Devonshire farmer,
as bearing on the probable price of cider, and would
have called it red, cerulean, purple, white, hyacin-
thine, or generally ‘ aglaos agreeable, as happened
to suit his verse.
§ 47. Again ; we have seen how fond the Greek
was of composing his paradises of rather damp grass;
but that in this fondness for grass there was always
an undercurrent of consideration for his horses; and
the characters in it which pleased him most were its
depth and freshness; not its colour. Now, if we
remember carefully the general expressions, respect-
I. THE FIELDS
243
CHA.P. XIV]
ing grass, used in modern literature, I think nearly
the commonest that occurs to us will be that of
‘ enamelled ’ turf or sward. This phrase is usually
employed by our pseudo-poets, like all their other
phrases, without knowing what it means, because it
has been used by other writers before them, and
because they do not know what else to say of grass.
If we were to ask them what enamel was, they could
not ’tell us ; and if we asked why grass was like
enamel, they could not tell us. . The expression has
a meaning, however, and one peculiarly characteristic
of mediteval and modern temper.
§ 48. The first instance I know of its right use,
though very probably it had been so employed be-
fore, is in Dante. The righteous spirits of the pre-
Christian ages are seen by him, though in the In-
ferno, yet in a place open, luminous, and high,
walking upon the ‘ green enamel '.
I am very sure that Dante did not use this phrase
as we use it. He knew well what enamel was; and
his readers, in order to understand him thoroughly,
must remember what it is — a vitreous paste, dis-
solved in water, mixed with metallic oxides, to give
it the opacity and the colour required, spread in a
moist state on metal, and afterwards hardened by
fire, so as never to change. And Dante means, in
using this metaphor of the grass of the Inferno, to
mark, that it is laid as a tempering and cooling sub-
stance over the dark, metallic, gloomy ground; but
yet so hardened by the fire, that it is not any more
fresh or living grass, but a smooth, silent, lifeless
bed of eternal green. And w^e know how hard
Dante’s idea of it was; because afterwards, in what
is perhaps the most awful passage of the whole In-
ferno, when the three furies rise at the top of the
burning tower, and catching sight of Dante, and not
being able to get at him, shriek wildly for the Gorgon
to come up too, that they may turn him into stone—
the word stone is not hard enough for them. Stone
might crumble away after it was made, or something
with life might grow upon it; no, it shall not be
iiU OF MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
stone; they will make enamel of him; nothing can
grow out of that ; it is dead for ever
Venga Medusa, si lo farem di Smalt o,
§ 49. Now, almost in the opening of the Purgatory,
as there at the entrance of the Inferno, we find a
company of great ones resting in a grassy place.
But the idea of the grass now is very different. The
word now used is not ‘ enamel but ‘ herb and
instead of being merely green, it is covered with
flowers of many colours. With the usual mediasval
accuracy, Dante insists on telling us precisely what
these colours were, and how bright; which he does
by naming the actual pigments used in illumination
— ‘ Gold, and fine silver, and cochineal, and white
lead, and Indian wood, serene and lucid, and fresh
emerald, just broken, would have been excelled, as
less is by greater, by the flowers and grass of the
place. ’ It is evident that the ‘ emerald ’ here means
the emerald green of the illuminators; for a fresh
emerald is no brighter than one which is not fresh,
and Dante w^as not one to throw away his words thus.
Observe, then, we have here the idea of the growth,
life, and variegation of the ‘ green herb as opposed
to the smalto of the Inferno; but the colours of the
variegation are illustrated and defined by the refer-
ence to actual pigments : and, observe, because the
other colours are rather bright, the blue ground
(Indian wood, indigo?) is sober; lucid, but serene;
and presently two angels enter, who are dressed in
green drapery, but of a paler green than the grass,
which Dante marks, by telling us that it was ‘ the
green of leaves just budded.’
§ 60. In all this, I wish the reader to observe two
things : first, the general carefulness of the poet in
defining colour, distinguishing it precisely as a painter
would (opposed to the Greek carelessness about it);
and, secondly, his regarding the grass for its green-
ness and variegation, rather than, as a Greek would
1 Compare parallel passage, making Dante hard or change-
less in good, rury. viii, 114.
CHAP, xiv] I. THE FIELDS , 245
have done, for its depth and freshness. This green-
ness or brightness, and variegation, are taken up by
later and modern poets, as the things intended to
be chiefly expressed by the word ‘ enamelled and,
gradually, the term is taken to indicate any kind of
bright and interchangeable colouring ; there being
always this much of propriety about it, when used
of gieensward, that such sward is indeed, like enamel,
a coat of bright colour on a comparatively dark
ground; and is thus a sort of natural jewellery and
painter’s work, different from loose and large veget-
ation. The word is often awkwardly and falsely
used, by the later poets, of all kinds of growth and
colour ; as by Milton of the bowers of Paradise show-
ing themselves over its wall; but it retains, never-
theless, through all its jaded inanity, some half-un-
conscious vestige of the old sense, even to the
present day.
§ 51. There arc, it seems to me, several important
deductions to be made from these facts. The Greek,
we have seen, delighted in the grass for its useful-
ness; the mediaBval, as also we moderns, for its
colour and beauty. But both dwell on it as the first
element of the lovely landscape; we saw its use in
Homer, wo see also that Dante thinks the righteous
spirits of the heathen enough comforted in Hades
by having even the iwage of green grass put beneath
their feet; the happy resting-place in Purgatory has
no other delight than its grass and flowers; and,
finally, in the terrestrial paradise, the feet of Matilda
pause where the Lethe stream first bends the blades
of grass. Consider a little what a depth* there is in
this groat instinct of the human race. Gather a
single blade of grass, and examine for a minute,
quietly, its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green.
Nothing, as it seems there, of notable goodness or
beauty. A very little strength, and a very little
tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a
point — ^not a perfect point neither, but blunt and
unfinished, by no means a creditable or apparently
much cared for example of Nature’s workmanship;
246 OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
made, as it seems, only to be trodden on to-day,
and to-morrow to be cast into the oven ; and a little
pale and hollow stalk, feeble and flaccid, leading
down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And yet,
think of it well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous
flowers that beam in summer air, and of all strong
, and goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes or good for
food — stately palm and pine, strong ash and oak,
scented citron, burdened vine — there be any by man
so deeply loved, by God so highly graced, as that
narrow point of feeble green. It seems to me not to
have been without a peculiar significance, that our
Lord, when about to work the miracle which, of all
that He showed, appears to have been felt by the
multitude as the most impressive — the miracle of
the loaves — commanded the people to sit down by
companies * upon the green grass He was about
to feed them with the principal produce of earth and
the sea, the simplest representations of the food of
mankind. He gave them the seed of the herb; He
bade them sit down upon the herb itself, which was
as great a gift, in its fitness for their joy and rest,
as its perfect fruit, for their sustenance; thus, in
this single order and act, when rightly understood,
indicating for evermore how the Creator had en-
trusted the comfort, consolation, and sustenance of
man, to the simplest and most despised of all the
leafy families of the earth. And well docs it fulfil
its mission. Consider what we owe merely to the
meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground
by that glorious enamel, by the companies of those
soft, and co'Untless, and peaceful spears. The fields I
Follow but forth for a little time the thoughts of
all that we ought to recognize in those words. All
spring and summer is in them, — ^the walks by silent,
scented paths, — the rests in noonday heat, — the joy
of herds and flocks, — the power of all shepherd life
and meditation, — the life of sunlight upon the world,
falling in emerald streaks, and failing in soft blue
shadows, where else it would have struck upon the
dark mould, or scorching dust, — ^pastures beside the
I. THE FIELDS
247
CHAP. XI V]
pacing brooks, — ^soft banks and knolls of lowly hills,
— thymy slopes of down overlooked by the blue line
of lifted sea, -—crisp lawns all dim with early dew,
or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine,
dinted by happy feet, and softening in their fall the
sound of losing voices : all these are summed in
those simple words; and these are not all. We may
not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly
gift, in our own land; though still, as we think of
it longer, the infinite of that meadow sweetness,
Shakspeare’s peculiar joy, would open on us more
and more, yet we have it but iu part. Go out, in
the spring time, among the meadows that slope from
the shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their
lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller
gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows
deep and free; and as you follow the winding moun-
tain paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled and
dim with blossom — paths that for ever droop and
rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down
in scented undulation, steep to the blue water,
studded here and there with new-mown heaps, filling
all the air with fainter sweetness, — look up towards
the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green
roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows
of the pines; and we may, perhaps, at last know the
meaning of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm,
‘ He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.’
§ 52. There are also several lessons symbolically
connected with this subject, which we must not allow
to escape us. Observe, the peculiar characters of the
grass, which adapt it especially for the •service of
man, are its apparent humility^ and cheerfulness.
Its humility, in that it seems created only for
lowest service — appointed to be trodden on, and fed
upon. Its cheerfulness, in that it seems to exult
under all kinds of violence and sufiering. You roll
it. and it is stronger the next day; you mow it, and
it multiplies its shoots, as if it were grateful; you
tread upon it, and it only sends up richer perfume.
Spring comes, and it rejoices with all the earth —
248 OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
glowing with variegated flame of flowers — waving
in soft depth of fruitful strength. Winter comes,
and though it will not mock its fellow plants by
growing then, it will not pine and mourn, and turn
colourless or leafless as they. It is always green;
and is only the brighter and gayer for the hoar-frost.
§ 63. Now, these two characters — of humility, and
joy under trial — are exactly those which most defin-
itely distinguish the Christian from the Pagan
spirit. Whatever virtue the pagan possessed was
rooted in pride, and fruited with sorrow. It began
in the elevation of his own nature; it ended but in
the ‘ verde smalto ’ — the hopeless green — of the
Elysian fields. But the Christian virtue is rooted in
self -debasement, and strengthened under suffering by
gladness of hope. And remembering this, it is
curious to observe how utterly without gladness the
Greek heart appears to be in watching the flowering
grass, and what strange discords of expression arise
sometimes in consequence. There is one, recurring
once or twice in Homer, which has always pained
me. He says, ‘ The Greek army was on the fields,
as thick as flowers in the spring It might be so;
but flowers in spring time are not the image by which
Dante would have numbered soldiers on their path
of battle. Dante could not have thought of the
flowering of the grass but as associated with happi-
ness. There is a still deeper significance in the
passage quoted, a little while ago, from Homer, de-
scribing Ulysses casting himself down on the rushes
and the corn -giving land at the river shore — the
rushes an& corn being to him only good for rest
and sustenance — when we compare it with that in
which Dante tells us he was ordered to descend to
the shore of the lake as he entered Purgatory, to
gather a rush, and gird himself with it, it being to
him the emblem not only of rest, but of humility
under chastisement, the rush (or reed) being the
only plant which can grow there ; ‘ no plant which
bears leaves, or hardens its bark, can live on that
shore, because it does not yield to the chastisement
I. THE FIELDS
249
CHAP. XIV]
of its waves.’ It cannot but strike the reader sin-
gularly how deep and harmonious a significance runs
through all these words of Dante — how every syllable
of them, the more we penetrate it, becomes a seed
of farther uhoughtl For, follow up this image of
the girding with the reed, under trial, and see to
whose feet it will lead us. As the grass of the
earth, thought of as the herb yielding seed, leads us
to the place where our Lord commanded the multi-
tude to sit down by companies upon the green grass;
so the grass of the waters, thought of as sustaining
itself among the waters of affliction, leads us to the
place where a stem of it was put into our Lord’s
hand for His sceptre; and in the crown of thorns,
and the rod of reed, was foreshown the everlasting
truth of the Christian ages — ^that all glory was to be
begun in suffering, and all power in humility.
Assembling the images we have traced, and adding
the simplest of all, from Isaiah^ xl, 6, we find, the
grass and flowers are types, in their passing, of the
passing of human life, and, in their excellence, of the
excellence of human life; and this in twofold way;
first, by their Beneficence, and then, by their endur-
ance : — the grass of the earth, in giving the seed of
corn, and in its beauty under tread of foot and stroke
of scythe; and the grass of the waters, in giving its
freshness for our rest, and in its bending before the
wave But understood in the broad human and
Divine sense, the ‘ herb yielding seed ’ (as opposed
to the fruit-tree yielding fruit) includes a third family
of plants, and fulfils a third office to the human race.
It includes the great family of the lintif and flaxes,
and fulfils thus the three offices of giving food,
raiment, and rest. Follow out this fulfilment; con-
sider the association of the linen garment and the
linen embroidery, with the priestly office, and the
furniture of the tabernacle; and consider how the
rush has been, in all time, the first natural carpet
1 So also in Isa., xxxv, 7, the prevalence of righteousness
and peace over all evil is thus foretold : * In the habitation of
dragons, where each lay, shall be grass, with reeds and rushes.*
260 OF MEDIJEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
thrown under the human foot. Then next observe the
three virtues definitely set forth by the three families
of plants ; not arbitrarily or fancifully associated
with them, but in all the three cases marked for us
by Scriptural words : ♦
1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in the grass
for food and beauty. ‘ Consider the lilies of the field,
'how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.’
2nd. Humility ; in the grass for rest. ‘ A bruised
reed shall He not break.’
3rd. Love; in the grass for clothing (because of
its swift kindling). ‘ The smoking flax shall He not
quench.’
And then, finally, observe the confirmation of these
last two images in, I suppose, the most important
prophecy, relating to the future state of the Christian
Church, which occurs in the Old Testament, namely,
that contained in the closing chapters of Ezekiel.
The measures of the Temple of God are to be taken;
and because it is only by charity and humility that
those measures ever can be taken, the angel has ‘ a
line of flax in his hand, and a measuring reed ’. The
use of the line was to measure the land, and of the
reed to take the dimensions of the buildings; so the
buildings of the church, or its labours, are to be
measured by humility, and its territory or land, by
love.
The limits of the Church have, indeed, in later
days, been measured, to the world’s sorrow, by
another kind of flaxen line, burning with the fire of
unholy zeal, not with that of Christian charity; and
perhaps the hest lesson which we can finally take to
ourselves, in leaving these sweet fields of the mediae-
val landscape, is the memory that, in spite of all
the fettered habits of thought of his age, this great
Dante, this inspired exponent of what lay deepest
at the heart of the early Church, placed his terrestrial
paradise where there had ceased to be fence or
division, and where the grass of the earth was bowed
down, in unity of direction, only by the soft waves
that bore with them the forgetfulness of evil.
CHAP. XV]
II. THE BOOKS
261
CHAPTER XV
OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE : SECONDLY, THE ROCKS
§ 1. I CLOSED the last chapter, not because our
subject was exhausted, but to give the reader breath-
ing time, and because I supposed he would hardly
care to turn back suddenly from the subjects of
thought last suggested, to the less pregnant matters
of inquiry connected with medijeval landscape. Nor
was the pause mistimed even as respects the order
of our subjects; for hitherto we have been arrested
chiefly by the beauty of the pastures and fields, and
have followed the mediaeval mind in its fond regard
of leaf and flower. But now we have some hard
hill-climbing to do; and the remainder of our in-
vestigation must be carried on for the most part, on
hands and knees, so that it is not ill done of us first
to take breath.
§ 2. It will be remembered that in the last chapter,
§ 14, we supposed it probable that there would be
considerable inaccuracies in the mediaeval mode of
regarding nature. Hitherto, however, we have found
none; but, on the contrary, intense accuracy, pre-
cision, and affection. The reason of this is, that all
floral and foliaged beauty might be perfectly repre-
sented, as far as its form went, in the sculpture and
ornamental painting of the period; hence the atten-
tion of men was thoroughly awakened to that beauty.
But as mountains and clouds and large ^features of
natural scenery could not be accurately represented,
we must be prepared to find them not so carefully
contemplated — more carefully, indeed, than by the
Greeks, but still in no wise as the things themselves
deserve.
§ 3. It was besides noticed that mountains, though
regarded with reverence by the mediaeval, were also
the subjects of a certain dislike and dread. And we
have seen already that in fact the place of the soul’s
OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiV
purification, though a mountain, is yet by Dante sub-
dued, whenever there is any pleasantness to be found
upon it, from all mountainous character into grassy
recesses, or slopes to rushy shore; and, in his general
conception of it, resembles much more a castle
mound, surrounded by terraced walks, — in the
-manner, for instance, of one of Turner’s favourite
scenes, the bank under Richmond Castle (Yorkshire);
or, still more, one of the hill slopes divided by
terraces, above the Rhine, in which the pictures que-
ness of the ground has been reduced to the form best
calculated for the growing of costly wine, than any
scene to which we moderns should naturally attach
the term ‘ Mountaiuous On the other hand, al-
though the Inferno is just as accurately measured
and divided as the Purgatory, it is nevertheless cleft
into rocky chasms which possess something of true
mountain nature — nature which we modems of the
north should most of us seek with delight, but which,
to the great Florentine, appeared adapted only for the
punishment of lost spirits, and which, on the mind
of nearly all his countrymen, would to this day pro-
duce a very closely correspondent effect; so that
their graceful language, dying away on the north side
of the Alps, gives its departing accents to proclaim
its detestation of hardness and ruggedness; and is
heard for the last time, as it bestows on the noblest
defile in all the Grisons, if not in all the Alpine chain,
the name of the ‘ evil way ’ — ‘ la Via Mala
§ 4, This * evil way though much deeper and
more sublime, corresponds closely in general character
to Dante’s '•Evilpits just as the banks of Richmond
do to his mountain of Purgatory; and it is notable
that Turner has been led to illustrate, with his whole
strength, the character of both; having founded, as
it seems to me, his early dreams of mountain form
altogether on the sweet banks of the Yorkshire
streams, and rooted his hardier thoughts of it in the
rugged clefts of the Via Mala.
§ 5. Nor of the Via Mala only : a correspondent
defile on the St Gothard — so terrible in one part of
11. THE BOCKS
2B3
CHAP. XV]
it, that it car), indeed, suggest no ideas but those of
horror to minds either of northern or southern
temper, and whose wild bridge, cast from rock to
rock over a chasm as utterly hopeless and escapeless
as any into which Dante gazed from the arches of
Malebolge, has been, therefore, ascribed both by
northern and southern lips to the master-building of
the great spirit of evil — supplied to Turner the ele-
ments of his most terrible thoughts in mountain
vision, even to the close of his life. The noblest
plate in the series of the Liber Studiorum one en-
graved by his own hand, is of that bridge; the last
mountain journey he ever took was up the defile;
and a rocky bank and arch, in the last mountain
drawing which he ever executed with his perfect
power, are remembrances of the path by which he
had travel sed in his youth this Malebolge of the St
Gothard.
§ 6. It is therefore with peculiar interest, as bear-
ing on our own proper subject, that we must examine
Dante’s conception of the rocks of the eighth circle.
And first, as to general tone of colour : from what
we have seen of the love of the mediseval for bright
and variegated colour, we might guess that his chief
cause of dislike to rocks would be, in Italy, their
comparative colourlessness. With hardly an excep-
tion, the range of the Apennines is composed of a
stone of which some special account is given here-
after in the chapters on Materials of Mountains, and
of which one peculiarity, there noticed, is its mono-
tony of hue. Our slates and granites are often of
very lovely colours; but the Apennine*limestone is
so grey and toneless, that I know not any mountain
districts so utterly melancholy as those which are
composed of this rock, when un wooded. Now, as
far as I can discover from the internal evidence in
his poem, nearly all Dante’s mountain wanderings
had been upon this ground. He had journeyed once or
twice among the Alps, indeed, but seems to have been
1 It is an unpublished plate. I know only two impressions
of it.
1S4 OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE [partiv
" - impressed chiefly by the road from Garda to Trent,
and that along the Comiche, both of which are either
upon these limestones, or a dark serpentine, which
shows hardly any colour till it is polished. It is not
ascertainable that he had ever seen rock scenery of
the finely coloured kind, aided by the Alpine mosses :
^ I do not know the fall at Forli (Inferno ^ xvi, 99), but
every other scene to which he alludes is among these
Apennine limestones; and when he wishes to give
the idea of enormous mountain size, he names Taber-
nicch and Pietra-pana — the one clearly chosen only
for the sake of the last syllable of its name, in order
to make a sound as of cracking ice, with the two
sequent rhymes of the stanza — and the other is an
Apennine neat- Lucca.
§ 7. His idea, therefore, of rock colour, founded
on these experiences, is that of a dull or ashen grey,
more or less stained by the brown of iron ochre, pre-
cisely as the Apennine limestones nearly always are;
the, grey being peculiarly cold and disagreeable. As
we go down the very hill which stretches out from
Pictra-pana towards Lucca, the stones laid by the
road side' to mend it arc of this ashen grey, with
efflorescences of manganese and iron in the fissures.
The whole of Malebolge is made of this rock, ‘ All
wrought in stone of iron-coloured grain.
Perhaps the iron colour may bq meant to predomin-
ate in Evilpits; but the definite gr^ limestone colour
is stated higher up, the river Styx flowing at the base
of ‘ malignant grey clifls (the Word malignant be-
ing given to the iron-coloured, Malebolge also) ; and
the same whitish grey idea is given again definitely
in describing the robe of the purgatorial or penance
angel which is ‘ of the colour of ashes, or earth, dug
dry Ashes necessarily mean r^ood-ashes in an
Italian mind, so that we get the tone very pale;
and there can be no doubt whatever about the hue
meant, because it is constantly seen on the sunny
1 (Cayley.) ‘Tutto di pietra, e di color ferrigno.* Inf.
xviii, 2.
2 ‘ Maligno piagge grige.* Ivf. vii, 108.
CHAP. XV] IL THE ROCKS 255
sides of the Italian hills, produced by the scorching
of the ground, a dusty and lifeless Whitish grey,
utterly painful and oppressive; and I have no doubt
that this colour, assumed eminently also by lime-
stone crags in the sun, is the quality wl^ch Homer
means to express by a term he applies often to bare
rooks, and which is usually translated * craggy or
* rocky Now Homer is indeed quite capable of
talking of ‘ rocky rocks just as he talks sometimes
of ‘ wet water ’ ; but I think he means more by this
word : it. sounds as if it were derived from another,
meaning ‘ meal ’, or ‘ flour and I have little doubt
it means ‘ mealy white ’ ; the Greek limestones being
for the most part brighter in effect than the Apennine
ones.
§ 8. And the fact is, that the great and pre-eminent
fault of southern, as compared with northern scenery,
is this rock-whiteness, which gives to distant moun-
tain ranges, lighted by the sun, sometimes a faint
and monotonous glow, hardly detaching itself from
the whiter parts of the sky, and sometimes a speckled
confusion of white light with blue shadow, breaking
up the whole mass of the hills, and making them look
near and small; the whiteness being still distinct
at the distance of twenty or twenty-five miles. The
inferiority and meagreness of such effects of hill, com-
pared with the massive purple and blue of our own
heaps of crags and morass, or the solemn grass-
greens and pine-purples of the Alps, have always
struck me most painfully; and they have rendered
it impossible for any poet or painter studying in the
south, to enter with joy into hill scenerj?. Imagine
the difference to Walter Scott, if instead of the single
lovely colour which, named by itself alone, was
enough to describe his hills.
Their southern rapine to renew,
Far in the distant Cheviot's hlne^
a dusty whiteness had been the image that first asso-
ciated itself with a hill range, and he had been
obliged, instead of ‘ blue * Cheviots, to say ‘ barley-
meal-coloured * Cheviots.
#6 OF MEDIAEVAL LAOTSCAPE [partiv
§ 9. But although this ^ would cAlise a somewhat
painful shock even to a modern minds it would be
as nothing when compared with the pain occasioned
by absence of colour to a mediaeval one. We have
been trained, by our ingenious principles of Renais-
sance architecture, to think that meal-colour and ash-
colour are the properest colours of all;' and that the
most aristocratic harmonies are to be deduced out
of grey mortar and creamy stucco. Any of our
modern classical architects would delightedly ‘ face ’
a heathery hill with Roman cement ; and any Italian
sacristan would, but for the cost of it, at once white-
wash the Cheviots. But the mediae vals had not
arrived at these abstract principles of taste. They
liked fresco better than whitewash; and, on the
whole, thought that Nature was in the right in paint-
ing her flowers yellow, pink, and blue; — not grey.
Accordingly, this absence of colour from rocks, as
compared with meadows and trees, was in their eyes
an unredeemable defect; nor did it matter to them
•whether its place was supplied by the grey neutral
tint, or the iron-coloured stain; for both colours,
grey and brown, were, to them, hues of distress,
despair, and mortification, hence adopted always for
the dresses of monks; only the word ‘ brown ’ bore,
in their colour vocabulary, a still gloomier sense than
with us. I was for some time embarrassed by
Dante’s use of it with respect to dark skies and
water. Thus, in describing a simple twilight — ^not a
Hades twilight, but an ordinarily fair evening —
(Inf, ii, 1) he says, the ‘ brown ’ air took the animals
of earth a\ray from their fatigues; the waves under
Charon’s boat are ‘ brown ’ (In/, hi, 117); and Lethe,
which is perfectly clear and yet dark, as with oblivion,
is ‘ bruna-bruna ‘ brown, exceedingly brown ’. Now,
clearly in all these cases no warmth is meant to be
mingled in the colour. Dante had never seen one
of our bog-streams, with its porter-coloured foam;
and there can be no doubt that, in calling Lethe
brown, he means it was dark slate grey, inclining to
black; as, for instance, our clear Cumberland lakes.
CHAP. XV] ir. f HE BOCKS 867
which, looked strai^t down upon where they are
deep, seem to be lakes of ink. i am sure ihis is the
colour he means; because no clear stream or lake
on the Continent ever looks brown, but blue or green;
and Dante, by merely taking away the pleasant
colour, would §et at once to this idea of grave clear
grey. So, when he was talking of twilight, his eye
for colour was far too good to let him call it brown
in our sense. Twilight is not brown, but purple,
golden, or dark grey; and this last was what Dante
meant. Farther, I find that this negation of colour
is always the means by which Dante subdues his
tones. Thus the fatal inscription on the Hades gate
is written in ‘ obscure colour and the air which
torments the passionate spirits is ‘ aer nero ’ black
air (Inf. v, 61), called presently afterwards (line 81)
malignant air, just as the grey cliffs are called malig-
nant cliffs.
§ 10. I was not, therefore, at a loss to find out what
Dante meant by the word; but I was at a loss to
account for his not, as it seemed, acknowledging the
existence of the colour of brown at all; for if he
called dark neutral tint * brown ’, it remained a
question what term he would use for things of the
colour of burnt umber. But, one day, just when I
was puzzling myself about this, I happened to be*
sitting by one of our best living modern colourists,,
watching him at his work, when he said, suddenly,,
and by mere accident, after we had been talking of
other things, ‘ Do you know I have found that there
is no brown in Nature? What we call brown is
always a variety either of orange or purpl^. It never
can be represented by umber, unless altered by
contrast. ’
§ 11. It is curious how far the significance of this
remark extends, how exquisitely it illustrates and
confirms the mediesval sense of hue; how far, on
the other hand, it cuts into the heart of the old
umber idolatries of Sir George Beaumont and his
colleagues, the ‘ where do you put your brown tree *
system; the code of Cremona-violin-coloured fore-
OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE [paeTiv
grounds, of brown varnish and aSphaltum; and aU
the old night-owl science, which, like Young’s pencil
of sorrow, .
In melancholy dipped, embrowns the whole.
Nay, I do Young an injustice by associating his
words with the asphalt schools ; for his eye for
colour was true, and like Dante Js; and I doubt not
that he means dark grey, as Byron purple- grey in
that night piece of the Siege of Corinth, beginning
’Tifi midnight ; on the mountains brown
The cold, round moon looks deeply down ;
and, by the way, Byron’s best piece of evening colour
farther certifies the hues of Dante’s twilight, — ^it
Dies like the dolphin, when it gasps away —
The last still loveliest; till ’tis gone, and all is grep.
§ 12. Let not, however, the reader confuse the
use of brown, as an expression of a natural tint, with
its use as a means of getting other tints. Brown is
often an admirable ground, just because it is the only
tint which is not to be in the finished picture, and
because it is the best basis of many silver greys and
purples, utterly opposite to it in their nature. But
there is infinite difference between laying a brown
ground as a representation of shadow — and as a base
for light : and also an infinite difference between
using brown shadows, associated with coloured lights
— always the characteristic of false schools of colour,
— and using brown as a warm neutral tint for general
study. I shall have to pursue this subject farther
hereafter, in noticing how brown is used by great
colourists in their studies, not as colour, but as the
pleasantest negation of colour, possessing more trans-
parency than black, and having more pleasant and
sunlike warmth. Hence Turner, in his early studies,
used blue for distant neutral tint, and brown for fore-
ground neutral tint; while, as he advanced in colour
science, he gradually introduced, in the place of
brown, strange purples, altogether peculiar to himself,
259
CHAP, xv] ” II. THE BOCKS
founded, apparently, on Indian red and vermilion,
and passing into various tones of russet and orange
But, in the meantime, we must go back to Dante
and his mountains.
§ 13. We find, then, that his general type of rook
colour was meant, whether pale or dark, to be a
colourless grey — the most melancholy hue which he
supposed to exist i» Nature (hence the synonym for
it, subsisting even till late times, in medisBval appel-
latives of dress, ‘ sad-coloured ’) — with some rusty
stain from iron ; or perhaps the ‘ color ferrigno * of
the Inferno does not involve even so much of orange,
but ought to be translated ‘ iron grey
This being his idea of the colour of rocks, we have
next to observe his conception of their substance.
And I believe it will be found that the character on
which he fixes first in them is frangihility — breakable-
ness to bits, as opposed to wood, which can be sawn
or rent, but not shattered with a hammer, and to
metal, which is tough and malleable.
Thus, at the top of the abyss of the seventh circle,
appointed for the ‘ violent \ or souls who had done
evil by force, w’e are told, first, that the edge of it
was composed of ‘ great broken stones in a circle
then, that the place was ‘ Alpine and, becoming
hereupon attentive, in order to hear what an Alpine
place is like, we find that it was * like the place
beyond Trent, where the rock, either by earthquake,
or failure of support, has broken down to the plain,
so that it gives any one at the top some means of
getting down to the bottom.’ This is pot a very
elevated or enthusiastic description of an Alpine
scene; and it is far from mended by the following
verses, in which we are told that Dante ‘ began to
go down by this great unloading of stones ’, and that
1 It is in these subtle purples that even the more elaborate
passages of the earlier drawings are worked ; as, for instance,
the Highland streams, spoken of in Pre-Raphaelitism. Also,
Turner could, by opposition, get what colour he liked out of a
brown. I have seen cases in which he had made it stand for
the purest rose light.
im OF MEDI^VAIi LANDSCAPE [partiv
they moved often under his feet by reason of the new
weight. The fact is that Dante, by many expres-
sions throughout the poem, shows himself to have
been a notably bad climber ; and being fond of sitting
in the sun, looking at his fair Baptistery, or walking
in a dignified manner on flat pavement in a long
robe, it puts him seriously out of his way when he
has to take to his hands and knees, or look to his feet ;
so that the first strong impression made upon him
by any Alpine scene whatever, is, clearly, that it is
bad walking. When he is in a fright and hurry, and
has a very steep place to go down, Virgil has to
carry him altogether, and is obliged to encourage
him, again and again, when they have a steep slope
to go up — ^the first ascent of the purgatorial moun-
tain. The similes by which he illustrates the steep-
ness of that ascent are all taken from the Riviera of
Genoa, now traversed by a good carriage road under
the name of the Corniche; but as this road did not
exist in Dante’s time, and the steep precipices and
promontories were then probably traversed by foot-
paths which, as they necessarily passed in many
places over crumbling and slippery limestone, were
doubtless not a little dangerous, and as in the
manner they commanded the bays of sea below, and
lay exposed to the full blaze of the south-eastern
sun, they corresponded precisely to the situation of
the path by which he ascends above the purgatorial
sea, the image could not possibly have been taken
from a better source for the fully conveying his idea
to the reader ; nor, by the way, is there reason
to discredit, in this place, his powers of climbing;
for, with his usual accuracy, he has taken the angle
of the path for us, saying it was considerably more
than forty -five. Now a continuous mountain slope of
forty -five degrees is already quite unsafe either for
ascent or descent, except by zigzag paths; and a
greater slope than this could not be climbed, straight-
forward, but by help of crevices or jags in the rock,
and great physical exertion besides.
§ 14. Throughout these passages, however, Dante’s
261
CHAP. XV] II. THE BOCKS
thoughts are clearly fixed altogether on the question
of mere accessibility or inaccessibility. He does not
show the smallest interest in the rocks, except as
things to be conquered; and his description of their
appearance is utterly meagre, involving no other
epithets than * erto ’ (steep or upright), Inf. xix,
131, Purg, iii, 48, &c.; ‘ sconcio * (monstrous), Inf.
xix, 131; ‘ stagliata * (cut). Inf. xvii, 134; ‘ maligno ’
(malignant). Inf. vii, 108; ‘ duro ’ (hard), xx, 25;
with ‘ large ’ and ‘ broken.’ (rotto) in various places.
No idea of roundness, massiveness, or pleasant form
of any kind appears for a moment to enter his mind ;
and the different names which are given to the rocks
in various places seem merely to refer to variations
in size : thus a ‘ rocco ’ is part of a ‘ scoglio Inf.
XX, 25 and xxvi, 27; a ‘ scheggio ’ (xxi, 60 and xxvi,
17) is a less fragment yet; a ‘ petrone ’, or * sasso
is a large stone or boulder (Purg. iv, 101, 104), and
‘ pietra ’, a less stone — both of these last terms, espe-
cially ‘ sasso being used for any largo mountainous
mass, as in Purg. xxi, 106; and the vagueness of the
word ‘ monte ’ itself, like that of the French ‘ mon-
tagne applicable either to a hill on a post-road
requiring the drag to be put on — or to the Mont
Blanc, marks a peculiar carelessness in both nations,
at the time of the formation of their languages, as to
the sublimity of the higher hills; so that the effect
produced on an English ear by the word ‘ mountain *,
signifying always a mass of a certain large size,
cannot be conveyed either in French or Italian.
§ 15. In all these modes of regarding rocks we find
(rocks being in themselves, as we shall 8ee presently,
by no means monstrous or frightful things) exactly
that inaccuracy in the mediteval mind which we had
been led to expect, in its bearings on things contrary
to the spirit of that symmetrical and perfect human-
ity which had formed its ideal ; and it is very curious
to observe how closely in the terms he uses, and the
feelings they indicate, Dante here agrees with
Homer. For the word stagliata (cut) corresponds
very nearly to a favourite term of Homer’s respecting
m OF MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE [paetiv
rocks * sculptured used by him also of ships* sides;
and the frescoes and illuminations of the Middle Ages
enable us to ascertain exactly what this idea of ‘ cut ’
rock was.
§ 16. In Plate X I have assembled some ex-
amples, which will give the reader a suflBcient know-
* ledge of medieeval rock-drawing, by men whose names
are known. They are chiefly taken from engravings,
with which the reader has it in his power to compare
them 1, and if, therefore,* any injustice is done to
the original paintings the fault is not mine; but the
general impression conveyed is quite accurate, and
it would not have been worth while, where work is
so deficient in first conception, to lose time in insuring
accuracy of facsimile. Some of the crap may be
taller here, or broader there, than in the original
paintings; but the character of the work is perfectly
preserved, and that is all .with which we are at
present concerned.
Fip. 1 and 6 are by Ghirlandajo; 2 by Filippo
Pesellino ; 4 by Leonardo da Vinci ; and 6 by Andrea
del Castagno. All these are indeed workmen of a
much later period than Dante, but the system of
rock-drawing remains entirely unchanged from
Giotto’s time to Ghirlandajo ’s; is then altered only
by an introduction of stratification indicative of a
little closer observance of nature, and so remains
until Titian’s time. Fig. 1 is exactly representative of
one of Giotto’s rocks, though actually by Ghirlandajo-,
and Fig. 2 is rather less skilful than Giotto’s ordinary
work. Both these figures indicate precisely what
Homer and Dante meant by ‘ cut ’ rocks. They had
observed the concave smoothness of certain rock
fractures as eminently distinctive of rook from earth,
and use the term ‘ cut * or ‘ sculptured ’ to distinguish
the smooth surface from the knotty or sandy one,
having observed nothing more respecting its real
contours than is represented in Figs, 1 and 2, which
look as if they had been hewn out with an adze.
^ The references are in Appendix I.
CHAP. XV] II. THE ROCKS 263
u
Lorenao Ghiberti preserves the same type, even in
his finest work.
Fig. 3, from an interesting sixteenth century MS
in the British Museum (Cotton, Augustus, a, 6j, is
characteristic of the best later illuminators’ work;
and Fig. 6, from Ghirlandajo, is pretty illustrative of
Dante’s idea of terraces on the purgatorial mountain.
It is the road by which the Magi descend in his
picture of their Adoration, in the Academy of Flor-
ence. Of the other examples I shall have more to
say in the chapter on Precipices ; meanwhile we have
to return to the landscape of the poem.
§ 17. Inaccurate as this conception of rock was,
it seems to have been the only one which, in mediae-
val art, had place as representative of mountain
scenery. To Dante, mountains are inconceivable ex-
cept as great broken stones or crags; all their broad
contours and undulations seem to have escaped his
eye. It is, indeed, with his usual undertone of
symbolic meaning that he describes the great broken
stones, and the fall of the shattered mountain, as
the entrance to the circle appointed for the punish-
ment of the violent; meaning that the violent and
cruel, notwithstanding all their iron hardness of heart,
have no true strength, but, either by earthquake, or
want of support, fall at last into desolate ruin, naked,
loose, apd shaking under the tread. But in no part
of the poem do we find allusion to mountains in
any other than a stern light; nor the slightest evi-
dence that Dante cared to look at them. From that
hill of San Miniato, whose steps he knew so well, the
eye commands, at the farther extremitj^ of the Val
d'Arno, the whole purple range of the mountains of
Carrara, peaked and mighty, seen always against the
sunset light in silent outline, the chief forms that
rule the scene as twilight fades away. By this vision
Dante seems to have been wholly unmoved, and,
but for Lucan’s mention of Aruns at Luna, would
seemingly not have spoken of the Cfj,rrara hills in
the whole course of his poem : when he does allude
to them, he speaks of their white marble, and their
264 OF MEDIiEVAL LANDSCAPE [part iv
command of stars and sea, but has evidently no regard
for the hills themselves. There is not a single phrase
or syllable throughout the poem which indicates such
a regard. Ugolino, in his dream, seemed to himself
to be in the mountains, ‘ by cause of which the
Pisan cannot see Lucca ’ ; and it is impossible to look
up from Pisa to that hoary slope without remember-
ing the awe that there is in the passage; neverthe-
less, it was as a hunting-ground only that he remem-
bered those hills. Adam of Brescia, tormented with
eternal thirst, remembers the hills of Romena, but
only for the sake of their sweet waters :
The rills that glitter down the grassy slopes
Of Oasentino, making fresh and soft
The banks whereby they glide to Arno’s stream,
Stand ever in my view.
And, whenever hills are spoken of as having any
influence on character, the repugnance to them is
still manifest; they are always causes of rudeness
or cruelty :
But that ungrateful and malignant race,
AYho in old times came down from Fesole,
At/y and still smack of their rough mountain Jlintf
Will, for thy good deeds, show thee enmity.
Take heed thou cleanse thee of their ways.
So again :
As one mount ain-bred^
Rugged, and clownish, if some city’s walls
He chance to enter, round him stares agape.
§ 18. Finally, although the Carrara mountains are
named as having command of the stars and sea, the
Alps are never specially mentioned but in bad
weather, or snow. On the sand of the circle of the
blasphemers :
Fell slowly wafting down
Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow
On Alpine summit, when the wind is hushed.
So the Paduans have to defend their town and castles
against inundation,
Ere the genial warmth be felt.
On Chiarentana’s top.
II. THE BOCKS
CHAP. XV]
265
The clouds of anger, in Purgatory, can only be figured
to the reader who has
On an Alpine height been ta’en by cloud,
Through which thou sawest no better than the mole
Doth through opacous membrane.
And in approaching the second branch of Lethe, the
seven ladies pause.
Arriving at the verge
Of a dim umbrage hoar, such as is seen
Beneath green leaves and gloomy branches oft
To overbrow a bleak and Alpine cliff.
§ 19. Truly, it is unfair of Dante, that when he is
going to use snow for a lovely image, and speak of
it as melting away under heavenly sunshine, he
must needs put it on the Apennines, not on the
Alps :
As snow that lies .
Amidst the living rafters, on the back
Of Italy, congealed, when drifted high
And closely piled by rough Sclavonian blasts,
Breathe but the land whereon no shadow falls,
And straightway, melting, it distils away,
liike a fire- wasted taper ; thus was I,
Without a sigh, or tear, consumed in heart.
The reader will thank me for reminding him,
though out of its proper order, of the exquisite passage
of Scott which we have to compare with this :
As snow upon the mountain’s hreast
Slides from the rock that gave it rest,
Sweet Ellen glided from her stay,
And at the monarch’s feet she lay.
Examine fihe context of this last passage, and its'
beauty is quite beyond praise; but note the northern
love of rocks in the very first words I have to quote
from Scott, ‘ The rocks that gave it rest ’. Dante could
not have thought of his ‘ cut rocks ’ as giving rest
even to snow. He must put it on the pine branches,
if it is to be at peace.
§ 20. There is only one more point to be noticed
in the Dantesque landscape; namely, the feeling
entertained by the poet towards the sky. And the
266 OF MEDIiEVAL LANDSCAPE [eartiv
love of mountains is so closely connected with the
love of clouds, the sublimity of both depending much
on their association, that, having found Dante regard-
less of the Carrara mountains as seen from San
Miniato, we may well expect to find him equally re-
gardless of the clouds in which the sun sank behind
them. Accordingly, we find that his only pleasure
in the sky depends on its ‘ white clearness ’, — that
turning into ‘ bianca aspetto di cilestro ’ which is so
peculiarly characteristic of fine days in Italy. His
pieces of pure pale light are always exquisite. In
the dawn on the purgatorial mountain, first, in its
pale white, he sees the ‘ tremola della marina ’ —
trembling of the sea; then it becomes vermilion; and
at last, nearaunrise, orange. These are precisely the
changes of a calm and perfect dawn. The scenery of
Paradise begins with ‘ Day added to day the light
of the sun so flooding the heavens, that ‘ never rain
nor river made lake so wide ’ ; and throughout the
Paradise all the beauty depends on spheres of light,
or stars, never on clouds. But the pit of the Inferno
is at first sight obscure, deep, and so cloudy that at
its bottom nothing could be seen. When Dante and
Virgil reach the marsh in which the souls of those
who have been angry and sad in their lives are for
ever plunged, they find it covered with thick fog;
and the condemned souls say to them.
We ouce were sad,
lu the sweet air, made gladsome hy the sun.
Now in these murky settlings are we sad.
Even the angel crossing the marsh to help them is
‘^annoyed by this bitter marsh smoke, ‘ fummo
acerbo and continually sweeps it with his hand
from before his face.
Anger on the purgatorial mountain, is in like
manner imaged, because of its blindness and wild-
ness, by the Alpine clouds. As they emerge from
its mist they see the white light radiated through the
fading folds of it; and, except this appointed cloud,
no other can touch the mountain of purification :
CHAP. XV]
II. THE ROCfilS
267
Tempest none, shower, hail, or snow.
Hoar-frost, or dewy moistness, higher falls,
Than that byief scale of threefold steps. Thick clouds,
Nor scudding rack, are ever seen, swift glance
Ne’er lightens, nor Thaumantian iris gleams.
Dwell for a little while on this intense love of
Dante for light — taught, as he is at last by Beatrice,
to gaze on the sun itself like an eagle — and endeav-
our to enter into his equally intense detestation of
all mist, rack of cloud, or dimness of rain; and
then consider with what kind of temper he would
have regarded a landscape of Copley Fielding’s, or
passed a day in the Highlands. He has, in fact,
assigned to the souls of the gluttonous no other
punishment in the Inferno than perpetuity of High-
land weather :
Show ers
Ceaseless, accursed, heavy and cold, unchanged
For ever, both in kind and in degree.
Large hail, discoloured water, sleety flaw,
Through the dim midnight air streamed down amain.
§ 21, However, in this immitigable dislike of
clouds, Dante goes somewhat beyond the general
temper of his age. For although the calm sky was
alone loved, and storm and rain were dreaded by all
men, yet the white horizontal clouds of serene
summer were regarded with great affection by all
early painters, and considered as one of the accom-
paniments of the manifestation of spiritual power;
sometimes, for theological reasons which we shall
soon have to examine, being received, evefi without
any other sign, as the types of blessing or Divine
acceptance; and in almost every representation of
the heavenly paradise, these level clouds are set by
the early painters for its floor, or for thrones of its
angels; whereas Dante retains steadily, through
circle after circle, his cloudless thought, and con-
cludes his painting of heaven, as he began it, upon
the purgatorial rhountain, with the image of shadow-
less morning ;
268 OF MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE [part iv
I raised my eyes, and as at morn is seen
The horizon’s eastern quarter to excel,
So likewise, that pacific Oriflamb
Glowed in the midmost, and toward every part,
With like gradation paled away its flame.
But the best way of regarding this feeling of
Dante’s is as the ultimate and most intense expres-
sion of the love of light, colour, and clearness, which,
as we saw above, distinguished the mediaeval from
the Greek on one side, and, as we shall presently
see, distinguished him from the modern on the other.
For it is evident that precisely in the degree in which
the Greek was agriculturally inclined, in that de-
gree the sight of clouds would become to him more
acceptable than to the mediaeval knight, who only
looked for the fine afternoons in which he might
gather the flowers in his garden, and in no wise
shared or imagined the previous anxieties of his
gardener. Thus, when we find Ulysses comforted
about Ithaca, by being told it had ‘ plenty of rain
and the maids of Colonos boasting of their country
for the same reason, wo may be sure that they had
same regard for clouds; and accordingly, except
Aristophanes, of whom more presently, all the Greek
poets speak fondly of the clouds, and consider them
the fitting resting-places of the gods; including in
their idea of clouds not merely the thin clear cirrus,
but the rolling and changing volume of the thunder-
cloud ; nor even these only, but also the dusty whirl-
wind cloud of the earth, as in that noble chapter of
Herodotus which tells us of the cloud, full of mystic
voices, that rose out of the dust of Eleusis, and went
down to Salamis. Clouds and rain were of course
regarded with a like gratitude by the eastern and
southern nations — Jews and Egyptians; and it is
only among the northern medieevals, with whom fine
weather was rarely so prolonged as to occasion pain-
ful drought, or dangerous famine, and over whom
the clouds broke coldly and fiercely when they came,
that the love of serene light assumes its intense
character, and the fear of tempest its gloomiest; so
II. THE ROCKS
269
CHAP. XV]
that the powers of the clouds which to the Greek
foretold his conquest at, Salamis, and with whom
he fought in alliance, side by side with their light-
nings, under the crest of Parnassus, seemed, in the
heart of the Middle Ages, to be only under the
dominion of the spirit of evil. I have reserved, for
our last example of the landscape of Dante, the
passage in which this conviction ' is expressed; a
passage not less notable for its close description of
what the writer feared and disliked, than for the
ineffable tenderness, in which Dante is always raised
as much above all other poets, as in softness the
rose above all other flowers. It is the spirit of
Buonconte da Montefeltro who speaks :
Then said another; ‘ Ah, so may thy wish,
That takes thee o’er the mountain, be fulfilled,
As thou shalt graciously give aid to mine !
Of Montefeltro I ; Buonconte I ;
Giovanna, nor none else, have care for me ;
Sorrowing with these I therefore go.’ I thus ;
‘ From Campaldino’s field what force or chance
Drew thee, that ne’er thy sepulture was known ? ’
‘ Oh ! ’ answered he, ‘ at Oasentino’s foot
A stream there courseth, named Archiano, sprung
In Apeunine, above the hermit’s seat.
E’en where its i\amo is cancelled, there came I,
Pierced in the throat, fleeing away on foot,
And bloodying the plain. Here sight and speech
Failed me ; and finishing with Mary’s name,
I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained. . . .
That evil will, which in his intellect
Still follows evil, came ; . . .
the valley, soon
As day was spent, he covered o^er with cloudy
From Pratomagno to the mountain range,
And stretched tiie sky above ; so that the air.
Impregnate, changed to water. Fell the rain ;
And to the fosses came all that the land
Contained not ; and, as mightiest streams are wont,
To the great river, with such headlong sweep,
Rushed, that nought stayed its course. My stiffened frame,
Laid at his mouth, the fell Archiano found,
And dashed it into Arno ; from my breast
Ijoosening the cross, that of myself I made
270 : OF MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE [part iv
"When overcome with pain. He hurled me on,
Along the banks and bottom of his course ;
Then in his muddy spoils encircling wrapt.’
Observe, Buonconte, as he dies, crosses his arms
over his breast, pressing them together, partly in his
pain, partly in prayer. His body thus lies by. the
river shore, as on a sepulchral monument, the arms
folded into a cross. The rage of the river, under
the influence of the evil demon, unlooses this cross ^
dashing the body supinely away, and rolling it over
and over by bank and bottom. Nothing can be truer
to the action of a stream in fury than these lines.
And how desolate is it all I The lonely flight — ^the
grisly wound, ‘ pierced in the throat * — the death,
without help or pity — only the name of Ma^ on the
lips — and the cross folded over the heart. Then the
rage of the demon and the river — the noseless grave,
— and, at last, even she who had been most trusted
forgetting him,
Giovanna, nor none else, have care for me.
There is, I feel assured, nothing else like it in all
the range of poetry; a faint and harsh echo of it,
only, exists in one Scottish ballad, * The Twa
Corbies
Here, then, I think, we may close our inquiry into
the nature of the mediaeval landscape; not but that
many details yet require to be worked out; but
these will be best observed by recurrence to them,
for comparison with similar details in modern land-
scape — our principal purpose, the getting at the
governing tones and temper of conception, being, I
believe, now sufficiently accomplished. And I think
that our subject may be best pursued by immediately
turning from the mediseval to the perfectly modern
landscape ; for although I have much to say respect-
ing the transitional state of mind exhibited in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I believe the
transitions may be more easily explained after we
have got clear sight of the extremes; and that by
getting perfect and separate hold of the three great
cHAP.xvi] OF MODERN LANDSCAPE 271
phases of art, — Greek, mediaeval, and modern — we
shall be enabled to trace, with least chance of error,
those curioue vacillations which brought us to the
modern temper while vainly endeavouring to resus-
citate the Greek. I propose, therefore, in the next
chapter, to examine the spirit of modern landscape,
as seen generally in modern painting, and especially
in the poetry of Scott.
CHAPTER XVI
OF MODERN LANDSCAPE
§ 1. We turn our eyes, therefore, as boldly and as
quickly as may be, from these serene fields and
skies of mediaeval art, to the most characteristic ex-
amples of rhodern landscape. And, I believe, the
first thing that will strike us, or that ought to strike
us, is their cloudiness.
Out of perfect light and motionless air, we find
ourselves on a sudden brought under sombre skies,
and into drifting wind; and, with fickle sunbeams
flashing in our face, or utterly drenched with sweep
of rain, we are reduced to track the changes of the
shadows on the grass, or watch the rents of twilight
through angry cloud. And we find that whereas all
the pleasure of the mediaeval was in stability, de-
finiteness, and luminousness, we are expected to
rejoice in darkness, and triumph in mutability; to
lay the foundation of happiness in things which mo-
mentarily change or fade; and to expect Uie utmost
satisfaction and instruction from what it is imposs-
ible to arrest, and difficult to comprehend.
§ 2. We find, however, together with this general
delight in breeze and darkness, much attention to
the real form of clouds, and careful drawing of
effects of mist; so that the appearance of objects,
as seen through it, becomes a subject of science with
us; and the faithful representation of that appear-
ance is made of primal importance, under the name
172 OF MODERN LANDSCAPE [paetiv
of a§rial perspective* The aspects of sunset and
sunrise, with all their attendant phenomena of cloud
and mist, are watchfully delineated; and in ordinary
daylight landscape, the sky is considered of so much
importance, that a principal mass of foliage, or a
whole foreground, is unhesitatingly thrown into shade
merely to bring out the form of a white cloud. So
that, if a general and characteristic name were needed
for modern landscape art, none better could be in-
vented than ‘ the service of clouds.’
§ 3. And this name would, unfortunately, be
characteristic of our art in more ways than one.
In the last chapter, I said that all the Greeks spoke
kindly about the clouds, except Aristophanes; and
he, I am sorry to say (since his report is so un-
favourable) is the only Greek who had studied them
attentively. He tells us, first, that they are ‘ great
goddesses to idle men ’; then, that they are ‘ mis-
tresses of disputings, and logic, and monstrosities,
and noisy chattering ’; declares that whoso believes
in their divinity must first disbelieve in Jupiter, and
place supreme power in the hands of an unknown
p[od ‘ Whirlwind ’ ; and, finally, he displays their
influence over the mind of one of their disciples, in
his sudden desire ‘ to speak ingeniously concerning
smoke
There is, I fear, an infinite truth in this Aristo-
phanic judgment applied to our. modern cloud -
worship. Assuredly, much of the love of mystery in
our romances, our poetry, our art, and, above all,
in our metaphysics, must come under that definition
so long ergo given by the great Greek, ‘ speaking
ingeniously concerning smoke And much of the in-
stinct, which, partially developed in painting, may
be now seen throughout every mode of exertion of
mind, -—the’ easily encouraged doubt, easily excited
curiosity, habitual agitation, and delight in the
changing and the marvellous, as opposed to the old
quiet serenity of social custom and religious faith, — is
again deeply defined in those few words, the ‘ dethron-
ing of Jupiter ’, the ‘ coronation of the whirlwind.’
278
CHAP. XVI] OF MOf)EfiN LANDSCAPE
§ 4. Nor of whirlwind merely, but also of dark-
ness or ignorance respecting all stable facts. That
darkening of the foreground to bring out the white
clouds, is, in one aspect of it, a type of the subjec-
tion of all plain and positive fact, to what is uncer-
tain and unintelligible. And as we examine farther
into the matter, we shall be struck by another great
difference between the old and modern landscape,
narhely, that in the old no one ever thought of draw-
ing anything but as well as he could. That might
not be well, as we have seen in the case of rocks; but
is was as well as he could, and always distinctly.
Leaf, or stone, or animal, or man, it was equally drawn
with care and clearness, and its essential characters
shown. If it was an oak tree, the acorns were
drawn; if a flint pebble, its veins wore drawn; if
an arm of the sea, its fish were drawn; if a group
of figures, their faces and dresses were drawn — to
the very last subtlety of expression and end of thread
that could be got into the space, far off or near.
But now our ingenuity is all ‘ concerning smoke ’.
Nothing is truly drawn but that; all else is vague,
slight, imperfect; got with as little pains as possible.
You examine your closest foreground, and find no
leaves; your largest oak, and find no acorns; your
human figure, and find a spot of red paint instead
of a face; and in all this, again and again, the
Aristophanic words come true, and the clouds seem
to be ‘ great goddesses to idle men.’
§ 5. The next thing that will strike us, after this
love of clouds, is the love of liberty. "V^hereas the
mediaeval was always shutting himself into castles,
and behind fosses, and drawing brickwork neatly,
and beds of flowers primly, our painters delight in
getting to the open fields and moors ; abhor all hedges
and moats ; never paint anything but free-growing
trees, and rivers gliding ‘ at their own sweet will ’;
eschew formality down to the smallest detail; break
and displace the brickwork which the mediaeval would
have carefully cemented ; leave unpruned the thickets
he would have delicately trimmed; and, carrying the
M. P.,111. T
)^:04t OF MODERN LANDBCAFE [paetiv
love of liberty even to license, and the love of wild-
ness even to ruin, take pleasure at last in every aspect
of age and desolation which emancipates the objects of
nature from the got-emment of men; — on the castle
wall displacing its tapestry with ivy, and spreading,
^ through the garden, the bramble for the rose.
§ 6. Connected with this love of liberty we find
a singular manifestation of love of mountains, and
see our painters traversing the wildest places of the
globe in order to obtain subjects with craggy fore-
grounds and purple distances. Some few of them
remain content with pollards and flat land ; but these
are always men of third-rate order; and the leading
masters, while they do not reject the beauty of the
low grounds, reserve their highest powers to paint
Alpine peaks or Italian promontories. And it is
eminently noticeable, also, that this pleasure in the
mountains is never mingled with fear, or tempered
by a spirit of meditation, as with the mediaeval; but
is always free and fearless, brightly exhilarating,
and wholly unreflectivo : so that the painter feels
that his mountain foreground may be more consist-
ently animated by a sportsman than a hermit; and
our modern society in general goes to the mountains,
not to fast, but to feast, and leaves their glaciers
covered with chicken-bones and egg-shells.
§ 7. Connected with this want of any sense of
solemnity in mountain scenery, is a general profanity
of temper in regarding all the rest of nature; that
is to say, a total absence of faith in the presence
of any deity therein. Whereas the mediaeval never
painted a cloud, but with the purpose of placing an
angel in it; and a Greek never entered a wood with-
out expecting to meet a god in it; we should think
the appearance of an angel in the cloud wholly un-
natural, and should be seriously surprised by meet-
ing a god anywhere. Our chief ideas about the wood
are connected with poaching. We have no belief that
the clouds contain more than so many inches of rain
or hail, and from our ponds and ditches expect no-
thing more divine than ducks and watercresses.
275
osAP.xvi] 6F modern LANDSCAPE
§ 8. Finally : connected with this profanity of
temper is a strong tendency to deny the sacred
element of colour, and make our boast in blackness.
For though occasionally glaring, or violent, modern
colour is on the whole eminently sombre, tending
continually to grey or brown, and by many of our
best painters consistently falsified, with a confessed
pride in what they call chaste or subdued tints; so
that, whereas a mediaeval paints his sky bright blue,
and his foreground bright green, gilds the towers of
his castles, and clothes his figures with purple and
white, we paint our sky grey, our foreground black,
and our foliage brown, and think that enough is
sacrificed to the sun in admitting the dangerous
brightness of a scarlet cloak or a blue jacket.
§ 9. These, I believe, are the principal points
which would strike us instantly, if we were to be
brought suddenly into an exhibition of modem land-
scapes out of a room filled with mediaeval work. It
is evident that there are both evil and good in this
change; but how much evil, or how much good, we
can only estimate by considering, as in the former
divisions of our inquiry, what are the real roots of
the habits of mind which have caused them.
And first, it is evident that the title ‘ Dark Ages ’,
given to the mediaeval centuries, is, respecting art,
wholly inapplicable. They were, on the contrary,
the bright ages; ours are the dark ones. I do not
mean metaphysically, but literally. They were the
ages of gold; ours are the ages of umber.
This is partly mere mistake in us; we build
brown brick walls, and wear brown coats, because we
have been blunderingly taught to do so, and go on
doing so mechanically. There is, however, also some
cause for the change in our own tempers. On the
whole, these are much sadder ages than the early
ones; not sadder in a noble and deep way, but
in a dim, wearied way — the way of ennui, and jaded
intellect, and uncomfortableness of soul and body.
The Middle Ages had their wars and agonies, but also
intense delights. Their gold was dashed with blood;
2?i« OF MODERN LANDSCAPE [paetiv
but ours is sprinkled with dust. Their life was in-
woven with white and purple ; ours is one seamless
stuff of brown. Not that we are without apparent
festivity, but festivity more or less forced, mistaken,
embittered, incomplete — ^not of the heart. How
wonderfully, since Shakspeare’s time, have we lost
the power of laughing at bad jests I The very finish
of our wit belies our gaiety.
§ 10. The profoundest reason of this darkness of
heart is, I believe, our want of faith. There never
yet was a generation of men (savage or civilized)
who, taken as a body, so wofully fulfilled the words,
‘ having no hope, and without God in the world ’,
as the present civilized European race. A Red
Indian or Otaheitan savage has more sense of a
Divine existence round him, or government over
him, than the plurality of refined Londoners and
Parisians; and those among us who may in some
sense be said to believe, are divided almost without
exception into two broad classes, Romanist and Puri-
tan; who, but for the interference of the unbelieving
portions of society, would, either of them, reduce the
other sect as speedily as possible to ashes; the
Romanist having always done so whenever he could,
from the beginning of their separation, and the
Puritan at this time holding himself in complacent
expectation of the destruction of Rome by volcanic
fire. Such division as this between persons nomin-
ally of one religion, that is to say, believing in the
same God, and the same Revelation, cannot but be-
come a stumbling-block of the gravest kind to all
thoughtful* and far-sighted men — a stumbling-block
which they can only surmount under the most favour-
able circumstances of early education. Hence, nearly
all our powerful men in this age of the world are
unbelievers; the best of them in doubt and misery;
the worst in reckless defiance; the plurality, in plod-
ding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what
practical work lies ready to their hands. Most of
our scientific men are in this last class; our popular
authors either set themselves definitely against all
277
cHAP.xvi] OF MODERN LANDSCAPE
religious form, pleading for simple truth and benevo-
lence, (Thackeray, Dickens), or give themselves up to
bitter and fruitless statement of facts, (De Balzac),
or surface-painting, (Scott), or careless blasphemy,
sad or smiling, (Byron, Beranger). Our earnest
poets, and deepest thinkers, are doubtful and indig-
nant, (Tennyson, Carlyle); one or two, anchored,
indeed, but anxious, or weeping, (Wordsworth, Mrs.
Browning) ; and of these two, the first is not so sure
of his anchor, but that now and then It drags with
him, even to make him cry out,
Great God, I had rather be
A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn ;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lOa,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn.
In politics, religion is now a name; in art, a
hypocrisy or affectation. Over German religious pic-
tures the inscription, ‘ See how Pious I am can be
read at a glance by any clear-sighted person. Over
French and English religious pictures, the inscrip-
tion, ‘ See how Impious I am ’, is equally legible.
All sincere and modest art is, among us, profane
§ 11. This faithlessness operates among us accord-
ing to our tempers, producing either sadness or levity,
and being the ultimate root alike of our discontents
and of our wantonnesses. It is marvellous how full of
contradiction it makes us : we are first dull, and
seek for wild and lonely places because we have no
heart for the garden; presently we recover our
spirits, and build an assembly room among the moun-
tains, because we have no reverence for the desert.
I do not know if there be game on Sin a?, but I am
always expecting' to hear of some one’s shooting
over it.
§ 12. There is, however, another, and a more inno-
cent root of our delight in wild scenery.
All the Renaissance principles of art tended, as I
1 Pre-Raphaelitism, of course, excepted, which is a new phase
of art, in no wise considered in this chapter. Blake was
sincere, but full of wild creeds, and somewhat diseased in
brain.
OF MODERN LANDSCAPE [i»A»Tiv
have before often explained, to the setting Beauty
above Truth, and seeking for it always at the ex-
pense of truth. And the proper punishment of such
pursuit — ^the punishment which all the laws of the
universe rendered inevitable — ^was, that those who
thus pursued beauty should wholly lose sight of
beauty. All the thinkers of the age, as we saw
previously, declared that it did not exist. The age
seconded their efiorts, and banished beauty, so far
as human effort could succeed in doing so, from the
face of the earth, and the form of man. To powder
the hair, to patch the cheek, to hoop the body, to
buckle the foot, were all part and parcel of the same
system which reduced streets to brick walls, and
pictures to brown stains. One desert of Ugliness was
extended before the eyes of mankind ; and their
pursuit of the beautiful, so recklessly continued,
received unexpected consummation in high-heeled
shoes and periwigs — Gower Street, and Gaspar
Poussin.
§ 13. Reaction from this state was inevitable, if
any true life was left in the races of mankind; and,
accordingly, though still forced, by rule and fashion,
to the producing and wearing all that is ugly, men
steal out, half-ashamed of themselves for doing so,
to the fields and mountains; and, finding among
these the colour, and liberty, and variety, and
power, which are for ever grateful to them, delight
in these to an extent never before known; rejoice
in all the wildest shattering of the mountain side,
as an opposition to Gower Street; gaze in a rapt
manner att sunsets and sunrises, to see there the
blue, and gold, and purple, whicji glow for them
no longer on knight’s armour or temple porch; and
gather with care out of the fields, into their blotted
herbaria, the flowers which the five orders of archi-
tecture have bsmished from their doors and case-
ments.
§ 14. The absence of care for personal beauty,
which is another great characteristic of the age, adds
to this feeling in a twofold way : first, by turning all
279
OHAP. xvi] OF MODERN LANDSCAPE
reverent thoughts away from human nature; and
making us think of men as ridiculous or ugly crea-
tures, getting through the world as well as they can,
and spoiling it in doing so; not ruling it in a kingly
way and crowning all its loveliness. In the Middle
Ages hardly anything but vice could be caricatured,
because virtue was always visibly and personally
noble ; now virtue itself is apt to inhabit such poor
human bodies, that no aspect of it is invulnerable,
to jest; and for all fairness we have to seek to the
flowers, for all sublimity, to the hills.
The same want of care operates, in another way,
by lowering the standard of health, increasing the
susceptibility to nervous or sentimental impressions,
and thus adding to the other powers of nature over
us whatever charm may be felt in her fostering the
melancholy fancies of brooding idleness.
§ 15. It is not, however, only to existing inani-
mate nature that our want of beauty in person and
dress has driven us. The imagination of it, as it
was seen in our ancestors, haunts us continually;
and while we yield to the present fashions, or act in
accordance with the dullest modern principles of
economy and utility, we look fondly back to the
manners of the ages of chivalry, and delight in paint-
ing, to the fancy, the fashions we pretend to despise,
and the splendours we think it wise to abandon.
The furniture and personages of our romance are
sought, when the writer desires to please most easily,
in the centuries which we profess to have surpassed
in everything ; the art which takes us into the
present times is considered as both daiiing and de-
graded ; and while the weakest words please us, and
are regarded as poetry, which recall the manners
of our forefathers, or of strangers, it is only as
familiar and vulgar that we accept the description
of our own.
In this we are wholly different from all the races
that preceded us. All other nations have regarded
their ancestors with reverence as saints or heroes;
but have nevertheless thought their own deeds and
280 OF MODERN LANDSCAPE [partiv
ways ot life the fitting subjects for their arts of paint-
ing or of verse. We, on the contrary, regard our an-
cestors as foolish and wicked, but yet find our chief
artistic pleasure in descriptions of their ways of life.
The Greeks and mediaevals honoured, but did not
imitate, their forefathers; we imitate, but do not
honour.
§ 16. With this romantic love of beauty, forced
to seek in history, and in external nature, the satis-
faction it cannot find in ordinary life, we mingle
a more rational passion, the due and just result of
newly awakened powers of attention. Whatever may
first lead us to the scrutiny of natural objects, that
scrutiny never fails of its reward. Unquestionably
they are intended to be regarded by us with both
reverence and delight; and every hour we give to
them renders their beauty more apparent, and their
interest more engrossing. Natural science — which
can hardly be considered to have existed before
modern times — rendering our knowledge fruitful in
accumulation, and exquisite in accuracy, has acted
for good or evil, according to the temper of the mind
which received it; and though it has hardened the
faithlessness of the dull and proud, has shown new
grounds for reverence to hearts which were thought-
ful and humble. The neglect of the art of war,
while it has somewhat weakened and deformed the
body 1, has given us leisure and opportunity for
studies to which, before, time and space were equally
wanting; lives which once were early wasted on
the battle field are now passed usefully in the study;
nations whjeh exhausted themselves in annual war-
fare now dispute with each other the discovery of
new planets ; and the serene philosopher dissects the
plants, and analyzes the dust, of lands which were
Of course this is meant only of the modern citizen or
country-gentleman, as compared with a citizen of Sparta or
old Florence. I leave it to others to say whether the ‘ neglect
of the art of war ’ may or may not, in a yet more fatal sfense,
be predicated of the English nation. War, without art, we
seem, with God’s help, able Atill to wage nobly.
CHAP. XVI] OF MODERN LANDSCAPE 281
of old only traversed by the knight in hasty march,
or by the borderer in heedless rapine.
§ 17. The elements of progress and decline being
thus strangely mingled in the modern mind, we
might beforehand anticipate that one of the notable
characters of our art would bo its inconsistency; that
efforts would be made in every direction, and arrested
by every conceivable cause and manner of failure;
that in all we did, it would become next to impos-
sible to distinguish accurately the grounds for praise
or for regret; that all previous canons of practice
and methods of thought would be gradually over-
thrown, and criticism continually defied by successes
which no one had expected, and sentiments w^hich
no one could define.
§ 18. Accordingly, while, in our inquiries into
Greek and mediaeval art, I was able to describe, in
general terms, what all men did or felt, I find now
many characters in many men; some, it seems to
me, founded on the inferior and evanescent principles
of modernism, on its recklessness, impatience, or
faithlessness; others founded on its science, its new
affection for nature, its love of openness and liberty.
And among all these characters, good or evil, I see
that some, remaining to us from old or transitional
periods, do not properly belong to us, and will soon
fade away; and others, though not yet distinctly
developed, are yet properly our own, and likely to
grow forward into greater strength.
For instance : our reprobation of bright colour is,
I think, for the most part, mere affectation, and
must soon be done away with. Vulgarity, dulness,
or impiety, will indeed always express themselves
through art in brown and grey, as in Rembrandt,
Caravaggio, and Salvator; but we are not wholly
vulgar, dull, oj impious; nor, as moderns, are we
necessarily obliged to continue so in any wise. Our
greatest men, whether sad or gay, still delight, like
the great men of all ages, in brilliant hues. The
colouring of Scott and Byron is full and pure; tliat
of Keats and Tennyson rich even to excess. Our
!282
OF MODERN DANDSOARE [partiv
practical failures in colouring are merely the neces-
sary consequences of our prolonged want of practice
during the periods of Renaissance aiSectation and
ignorance; and the only durable difEerence between
old and modern colouring, is the acceptance of cer-
tain hues, by the modern, which please him by ex-
pressing that ’ melancholy peculiar to his more
reflective or sentimental character, and the greater
variety of them necessary to express his greater
science.
§ 19. A^ain : if we ever become wise enough to
dress consistently and gracefully, to make health a
principal object in education, and to render our streets
beautiful with art, the external charm of past history
will in great measure disappear. There is no essen-
tial reason, because we live after the fatal seven-
teenth century, that we should never again be able
to confess interest in sculpture, or see brightness in
embroidery; nor, because now we choose to make
the night deadly with our pleasures, and the day
with our labours, prolonging the dance till dawn,
and the toil to twilight, that we should never again
learn how rightly to employ the sacred trusts of
strength, beauty, and time. Whatever external
charm attaches itself to the past, would then be
seen in proper subordination to the brightness of
present life; and the elements of romance would
exist, in the earlier ages, only in the attraction which
must generally belong to whatever is unfamiliar; in
the reverence which a noble nation always pays to
its ancestors; and in the enchanted light which
races, like^individuals, must perceive in looking back
to the days of their childhood.
§ 20. Again : the peculiar levity with which natural
scenery is regarded bv a large number of modern
minds cannot be consiSered as entirely characteristic
of the age, inasmuch as it never can belong to its
greatest intellects. Men of any high mental power
must be serious, whether in ancient or modern days :
a certain degree of reverence for fair scenery is found
in all our great writers without exception, — even the
CHAP, xvi] OF MODERN LANDSCAPE m
one who has made us laugh oftenest, taking Us to the
valley of Chamouni, and to the sea beach, there to
give peace after suffering, and change revenge into
pityi. It is only the dull, the uneducated, or the
worldly, whom it is painful to meet on the hill-sides;
and levity, as a ruling character, cannot be ascribed
to the whole nation, but only to its holiday-making
apprentices, and its House of Commons.
§ 21. We need not, therefore, expect to find any
single poet or painter representing the entire group
of powers, weaknesses, and inconsistent instincts
which govern or confuse our modern life. But we
may expect that in the man who seems to be given
by Providence as the type of the age (as Homer
and Dante were given, as the types of classical and
mediaaval mind), we shall find whatever is fruitful
and substantial to be completely present, together
with those of our weaknesses, which are indeed
nationally characteristic, and compatible with general
greatness of mind; just as the weak love of fences,
and dislike of mountains, were found compatible with
Dante’s greatness in other respects.
§ 22. Farther : as the admiration of mankind is
found, in our times, to have in great part passed
from men to mountains, and from human emotion
to natural phenomena, we may anticipate that the
great strength of art will also be warped in this
direction; with this notable result for us, that where-
as the greatest painters or painter of classical and
mediceval periods, being wholly devoted to the repre-
sentation of humanity, furnished us with but little
to examine in landscape, the greatest painters or
painter of modern times will in all probability be
devoted to landscape principally; and farther, be-
cause in representing human emotion words surpass
painting, but in representing natural scenery paint-
ing surpasses words, we may anticipate also that the
painter and poet (for convenience’ sake I here use
the words in opposition) will somewhat change their
relations of rank in illustrating the mind of the age;
1 See David Copperjield^ chap. Iv, and Iviii.
284 OF MODERN LANDSCAPE [partiv
tliat the painter will become of more importance, the
poet of less ; and that the relations between the men
who are the types and firstfruits of the age in word
and work — namely, Scott and Turner — will be, in
many curious respects, different from those between
Homer and Phidias, or Dante and Giotto,
It is this relation which we have now to examine.
§ 23. And, first, I think it probable that many
readers may be surprised at my calling Scott the
great representative of the mind of the age of litera-
ture. Those who can perceive the intense penetra-
tive depth of Wordsworth, and the exquisite finish
and melodious power of Tennyson, may be offended
at my placing in higher rank that poetry of care-
less glance, and 'reckless rhyme, in which Scott
poured out the fancies of his youth; and those who
are familiar with the subtle analysis of the French
novelists, or who have in any wise submitted them-
selves to the influence of German philosophy, may
be equally indignant at my ascribing a principality
to Scott among the literary men of Europe, in an
age which has produced De Balzac and Goethe.
So also in painting, those who are acquainted with
the sentimental efforts made at present by the Ger-
man religious and historical schools, and with the
disciplined power ajid learning of the French, will
think it beyond all explanation absurd to call a
painter of light water-colour landscapes, eighteen
inches by twelve, the first representative of the arts
of the age. I can onl 3 ^ crave the reader’s patience,
and his due consideration of the following reasons
for my drting so, together with those advanced in
the farther course of the work.
§ 24. I believe the first test of a truly great man
is his humility. I do not mean, by humility, doubt
of his own power, or hesitation in speaking his
opinions; but a right understanding of the relation
between what he can do and say, and the rest of
the world’s sayings and doings. All great men not
only know their business, but usually know that they
know it ; and are not only right in their main
2B5
CHAP, XVI] OF MODERN LANDSCAPE
opinions, but they usually know that they are right
in them; only, they do not think much of them-
selves on that account. Arnolfo knows he can build
a good dome at Florence; Albert Diirer writes calmly
to one who had found fault with his work, ‘ It can-
not be better done Sir Isaac Newton knows that
he has worked out a problem or two that would have
puzzled anybody else; — only they do not expect theii*
fellow-men therefore to fall down and worship them;
they have a curious under-sense of powerlessness,
feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through
them; that they could not do or be anything else
than God made them. And they see something
divine and God-made in every other man they meet,
and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.
§ 26. Now, I find among the men of the present
age, as far as I know them, this character in Scott
and Turner pre-eminently ; I am not sure if it is
not in them alone. I do not find Scott talking about
the dignity of literature, nor Turner about the dignity
of painting. They do their work, feeling that they
cannot well help it; the story must be told, and
the effect put down; and if people like it, well and
good; and if not, the world will not be much the
worse.
I believe a very different impression of their esti-
mate of themselves and their doings will be received
by any one who reads the conservations of Words-
worth or Goethe. The slightest manifestation of
jealousy or self-complacency is enough to mark a
second-rate character of the intellect; and I fear
that, especially in Goethe, such manifestations are
neither few nor slight.
§ 26. Connected with this general humility, is the
total absence of affectation in these men — that is to
say, of any assumption of manner or behaviour in
their work, in order to attract attention. Not but
that they are mannerists both. Scott’s verse is
strongly mannered, and Turner’s oil painting; but
the manner of it necessitated by the feelings of the
men, entirely natural to both, never exaggerated for
286 OF MODEEN LANDSCAPE [pmiv
the sake of show. I hardly know any other literary
or pictorial work of the day . which is not in some
degree affected. I am afraid Wordsworth was often
affected in his simplicity, and Be Balzac in his finish.
Many fine French writers are affected in their
reserve, and full of stage tricks in placing of sen-
tences. It is lucky if in German writers we ever
find so much as a sentence without affectation. I
know no painters without it, except one or two Pre-
Raphaelites (chiefly Holman Hunt), and some simple
water-colour painters, as William Hunt, William
Turner of Oxford, and the late George Robson; but
these last have no invention, and therefore by our
fourth canon, Chap. Ill, § 21, are excluded from
the first rank of artists; and of the Pre-Raphaelites
there is here no question, as they in no wise represent
the modem school.
§ 27. Again : another very important, though not
infallible, test of greatness is, as wo have often said,
the appearance of Ease with which the thing is done.
It may be that, as with Bante and Leonardo, the
finish given to the work effaces the evidence of ease ;
but where the ease is manifest, as in Scott, Turner,
and Tintoret ; and the thing done is very noble, it is
a strong reason for placing the men above those who
confessedly w^rk with great pains. Scott writing his
chapter or two before breakfast — ^not retouching,
Turner finishing a whole drawing in a forenoon be-
fore he goes out to shoot (providing always the chap-
ter and drawing be good), are instantly to be set
above men who confessedly have spent the day over
the work, and think the hours well spent if it has
been a little mended between sunrise and sunset.
Indeed, it is no use for men to think to appear great
by working fast, dashing, and scrawling; the thing
they do must be good and great, cost what time it
may; but if it he so, and they have honestly and
unaffectedly done it with no effort ^ it is probably a
greater and better thing than the result of the
hardest efforts of others.
§ 28. Then, as touching the kind of work done by
CHAP. XVI] OP MODERN LANDSCAPE m
these two men, the more I ihink of it I find this
conclusion more impressed upon me, — ^that the great-
est thing a human soul ever does in this world is
to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain
way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who
can think, but thousands can think for one who can
see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and reli-
gion — all in one.
Therefore, finding the world of Literature more or
less divided into Thinkers and Seers, I believe we
shall find also that the Seers are wholly the greater
race of the two. A true Thinker, who has practical
purpose in his thinking, and is sincere, as Plato, or
Carlyle, or Helps, becomes in some sort a seer, and
must be always of infinite use in his generation ; but
an affected Thinker, who supposes his thinking of
any other importance than as it tends to work, is
about the vainest kind of person that can be found
in the occupied classes. Nay, I believe that meta-
physicians and philosophers are, on the whole, the
greatest troubles the world has got to deal with;
and that while a tyrant or bad man is of some use
in teaching people submission or indignation, and a
thoroughly idle man is only harmful in setting an
idle example, and communicating to other lazy people
his own lazy misunderstandings, busy metaphysi-
cians are always entangling good and active people,
and weaving cobwebs among the finest wheels of
the world’s business; and are as much as possible,
by all prudent persons, to be brushed out of their
way, like spiders, and the meshed weed that has
got into the Cambridgeshire canals, and dther such
impediments to barges and business. And if we
thus clear the metaphysical element out of modern
literature, we shall find its bulk amazingly dimin-
ished, and the claims of the remaining writers, or
of those whom we have thinned by this abstraction
of their straw stuffing, much more easily adjusted
1 Observe, I do not speak thns of metaphysics because I have
no pleasure in them. Wlien I speak contemptuously of philo-
logy, it may be answ'ered me, that I am a bad scholar ; but I
288 OF MODERN LANDSCAPE [partiv
§ 29. Again : the mass of sentimental literature,
concerned with the analysis and description of
emotion, headed by the poetry of Byron, is alto-
gether of lower rank than the literature which merely
describes what it saw. The true Seer always feels
as intensely as any one else; but he does not much
describe his feelings. He tells you whom he met,
and what they said; leaves you to make out, from
that, what they feel, and what he feels, but goes
into little detail. And, generally speaking, pathetic
writing and careful explanation of passion are quite
easy, compared with this plain recording of what
people said and did, or with the right invention of
what they are likely to say and do; for this reason,
that to invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly
tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp the
entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and
know precisely how they would bo affected by what
happens; which to do requires a colossal intellect;
but to describe a separate emotion delicately, it is
only needed that one should feel it oneself; and
thousands of people are capable of feeling this or
that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter
into all the feelings of somebody sitting on the
other side of the table. Even, therefore, where this
sentimental literature is first rate, as in passages of
Byron, Tennyson, and Keats, it ought not to be
ranked so high as the Creative; and though perfec-
tion, even in narrow fields, is perhaps as rare as
in the wider, and it may be as long before we have
another In Memoriam as another Guy Mannering,
I unhesit^itingly receive as a greater manifestation
of power the right invention of a few sentences
spoken by Pleydell and Mannering across their
supper-table, than the most tender and passionate
melodies of the self -examining verse.
cannot be so answered touching metaphysics, for every one
conversant with such subjects may see that I have strong
inclination that way. which would, indeed, have led me far
astray long ago, if I had not learned also some use of my
handLs, eyes, and feet.
cHAP.xvi] OP MODERN LANDSCAPE 289
§ 80. Having, therefore, cast metaphysical vh-iters
out of our way, and sentimental writers into the
second rank, I do not think Scott’s supremacy
among those who remain will any more be doubtful;
nor would it, perhaps, have been doubtful before,
had it not been encumbered by innumerable faults
and weaknesses. But it is pre-eminently in these
faults and weaknesses that Scott is representative of
the mind of his age : and because he is the greatest
man born amongst us, and intended for the endur-
ing type of us, all our principal faults must be laid
on his shoulders, and he must bear down the dark
marks to the latest ages; while the smaller men,
who have some special work to do, perhaps not so
much belonging to this age as leading out of it to
the next, are often kept providentially quit of the
encumbrances which they had not strength to sus-
tain, and are much smoother and pleasanter to look
at, in their way : only that is a smaller way.
§ 31. Thus, the most startling fault of the age
being its faithlessness, it is necessary that its greatest
man should be faithless. Nothing is more notable or
sorrowful in Scott’s mind than its incapacity of
steady belief in anything. He cannot even resolve
hardily to believe in a ghost, or a water-spirit; always
explains them away in an apologetic manner, not
believing, all the while, even in his own explanation.
He never can clearly ascertain whether there is any-
thing behind the arras but rats; never draws sword,
and thrusts at it for life or death; but goes on look-
ing at it timidly, and saying, ‘ it must be the wind ’.
He is educated a Presbyterian, and remains one,
because it is the most sensible thing he can do if
he is to live in Edinburgh; but he thinks Romanism
more picturesque, and profaneness more gentle-
manly : does not see that anything affects human
life but love, courage, and destiny; 'which are, in-
deed, not matters of faith at ail, but of sight. Any
gods but those are very misty in outline to him;
and when the love is laid ghastly in poor Charlotte’s
coffin ; and the courage is no more of use — ^the
M. p.,m. u
^90 OF MODEBN LANDSCAPE [paetiv
pen having fallen from between the fingers; and
destiny is sealing the serbll — tke God-li^t is dim
in the tears that fall on it.
He is in all. this the epitome of his epoch.
§, 82. Again : as another notable weakness of the
age is its habit of Idoking back, in a romantic and
passionate idleness, to the past ages, not under-
standing them all the while, nor really desiring to
understand them, so Scott gives up nearly the half of
his int^y^ctual power to a fond, yet purposeless,
dreamin^'pter the past, and spends half his literary
labourism endeavours to revive it, not in reality, but
on the stage of fiction; endeavours which were the
best of thetkind that modernism made, but still suc-
cessful only so far as Scott put, under the old armour,
the everlasting human nature which he knew; and
totally unsuccessful, so far as concerned the painting
of the armour itself, which he knew not. The excel-
lence of Scott’s work is precisely in proportion to the
degree in which it is sketched from present nature.
His familiar life is inimitable ; his quiet scenes of in-
troductory conversation, as the beginning of Rob Roy
and Redgauntlet, and all his living Scotch charac-
ters, mean or noble, from Andrew Fairservice to
Jeanie Deans, are simply right, and can never be
bettered. But his romance and antiquarianism, his
knighthood and monkery, are all false, and he knows
them to be false; does not care to make them
earnest; enjoys them for their strangeness, but
laughs at his own antiquarianism, all through his
own third novel — with exquisite modesty indeed,
but with total misunderstanding of the function of
an Antiquary. He does not see how anything is to
be got out of the past but confusion, old iron on
drawingroom chairs, and serious inconvenience to
Dr Heavysterne.
§ 33. Again : more than any age that had preceded
it, ours had been ignorant of the meaning of the
word ‘ Art It had not a single fixed principle, and
what unfixed principles it worked upon were aJl
wrong. It was necessary that Scott should know
OHAP.XVI] OF MODERN LANDSCAPE m
Nothing of art. He neither cared for painting nor
sculpture, and wa| totally incapable of formu^g a
judgment about them. He had some contused li?ve
of Gothic architecture, because it was dark, pictur-
esque, old, and like nature; but could not til the
worst from the best, and built for himself perhaps
the most incongruous and ugly pile that gentlemanly
modernism ever designed; marking, in the mx>st
curious and subtle way, that mingling of reverence
with irreverence which is so striking in the age ; he
reverences Melrose, yet casts one of itt piscinas,
puts a modern steel grate into it, and makes it his
fireplace. Like all pure moderns, he supposes the
Gothic barbarous, notwithstanding his love of it;
admires, in an equally ignorant way, totally opposite
styles ; is delighted with the new town of Edinburgh ;
mistakes its dulness for purity of taste, and actually
compares it, in its deathful formality of street, as
contrasted with the rudeness of the old town, to
Britornart taking off her armour.
§ 84. Again : as in reverence and irreverence, so
in levity and melancholy, we saw that the spirit of
the age was strangely interwoven. Therefore, also,
it is necessary that Scott should bo light, careless,
unearnest, and yet eminently sorrowful. Through-
out all his work there is no evidence of any purpose
but to while away the hour. His life had no other
object than the pleasure of the instant, and the
establishing of a family name. All his thoughts
were, in their outcome and end, less than nothing,
and vanity. And yet, of all poetry that I know,
none is so sorrowful as Scott’s. Other gr®at masters
are pathetic in a resolute and predetermined way,
when they choose; but, in their own minds, are
evidently stern, or hopeful, or serene; never really
melancholy. Even Byron is rather sulky and des-
perate than melancholy; Keats is sad because he is
sickly; Shelley because he is impious; but Scott
is inherently and consistently sad. Around all his
power, and brightness, and enjoyment of eye and
heart, the far-away JEolian knell is for ever sound-
OF MODEBN LANDSCAPE [partiv
lxi|;; there is not one of those loving or laughing*'
glances of his but it is brighter fgr the film of tears;
his mind is like one of his own hill rivers, — ^it is
white, and flashes in the sun fairly, careless, as it
seems, and hasty in its going, but
Far beneath, where slow they creep
From pool to eddy, dark and deep,
Where alders moist, and willows weep,
You hear her streams repine.
Life begins to pass from him very early; and
while Homer sings cheerfully in his blindness, and
Dante retains his courage, and rejoices in hope of
Paradise, through all his exile, Scott, yet hardly
past his J^th, lies pensive in the sweet sunshine
and among the harvests of his native hills.
Blackford, on whose uncultured breast,
Among the broom, and thorn, and whin,
A truant boy, I sought the nest.
Or listed as I lay at rest,
While rose on breezes thin
The murmur of the city crowd,
And, from his steeple jangling loud,
St. Giles’s mingling din !
Now, from the summit to the plain,
Waves all the hill with yellow grain ;
And on the landscape as I look,
Nought do 1 see unchanged remain,
Save the rude cliffs and chiming brook ;
To me they make a heavy moan
Of early friendships past and gone.
§ 35. Such, then, being the weaknesses which it
was necessary that Scott should share with his age,
in order that he might sufficiently represent it, and
such the grounds for supposing him, in spite of all
these weaknesses, the greatest literary man whom
that age produced, let us glance at the principal
points in which his view of landscape difiers from
that of the mediae vals.
I shall not endeavour now, as I did with Homer
and Dante, to give a complete analysis of all the
feelings which appear to be traceable in Scott’s allu-
CHAP. XVI] OF MOBERlSr' LANDSCAPE 298
sions to landscape scenery — ^for this would require
a volume — ^but ordy to indicate the main points of
differing character oetween his temper and Dante’s.
Then we will examine in detail, not the landscape
of literature, but that of painting, which must, of
course, be equally, or even in a higher degree,
characteristic of the age.
§ 86. And, first, observe Scott’s habit of looking
at nature neither as dead, or merely material, in
the way that Homer regards it, nor as altered by his
own feelings, in the way that Keats and Tennyson
regard it, but as having an animation and pathos of
its own, wholly irrespective of human presence or
passion — an animation which Scott loves and sym-
pathizes with, as he would with a fellow-creature,
forgetting himself altogether, and subduing his own
humanity before what seems to him the power of
the landscape :
Yon lonely thorn,— would he could tell
The changes of his parent dell,
Since he, so grey and stubborn now,
Waved in each breeze a sapling bough !
Would he could tell, how deep the shade
A thousand mingled branches made,
How broad the shadows of the oak,
How clung the rowan to the rock,
And through the foliage showed his head,
With narrow leaves and berries red !
Scott does not dwell on the grey stubbornness of the
thorn, because he himself is at that moment disposed
to be dull, or stubborn; neither on the cheerful
peeping forth of the rowan, because he*himself is
at that moment cheerful or curious ; but he perceives
them both with the kind of interest that he would
take in an old man, or a climbing boy; forgetting
himself, in sympathy with either age or youth.
And from the grassy slope he sees
The Greta flow to meet the Tees.
Where issuing from her darksome bed,
She caught the morning’s eastern red,
And through the softening vale below
Roiled her bright waves in rosy glow,
114 * OF MODERN LANDSCAPE [partiv
All blushing to her bridal bed,
Like some shy maid, in convent bred ;
While linnet, lark, and blackbird gay
Sing forth her nuptial roundelay.
Is Scott, or are the persons of his story, gay at this
moment? Far from it. Neither Scott nor Rising-
ham are happy, but the Greta is; and all Scott’s
sympathy is ready for the Greta, on the instant.
§ 87. Observe, therefore, this is not pathetic
fallacy; for there is no passion in Scott \^hich alters
nature. It is not the lover’s passion, making him
think the larkspurs are listening for his lady’s foot;
it is not the miser’s passion, making him think that
dead leaves are falling coins; but it is an inherent
and continual habit of thought, which Scott shares
with the moderns in general, being, in fact, nothing
else than the instinctive sense which men must
have of the Divine presence, not formed into distinct
belief. In the Greek it created, as we saw, the faith-
fully believed gods of the elements; in Dante and
the mediesvals, it formed the faithfully believed
angelic presence : in the modern, it creates no perfect
form, does not apprehend distinctly any Divine
being or operation; but only a dim, slightly credited
animation in the natural object, accompanied with
great interest and affection for it. This feeling is
quite universal with us, only varying in depth accord-
ing to the greatness of the heart that holds it; and
in Scott, being more than usually intense, and accom-
panied with infinite affection and quickness of sym-
pathy, it enables him to conquer all tendencies to
the pathetic fallacy, and, instead of making Nature
anywise subordinate to himself, he mak^' himself
subordinate to her — follows her lead simply— does not
venture to bring his own cares and thoughts into her
pure and quiet presence — ^paints her in her simple
and universal truth, adding no result of momentary
passion or fancy, and appears, therefore, at first
shallower than other poets, being in reality wider
and healthier. ‘ What am I?’ he says continually,
‘that I should trouble this sincere nature with my
CHAP. XVI] OF MODERN LANDSCAPE 295
thoughts. I happen to be feverish and depressed, and
I could see a great naany sad and strange things
in those waves and flowers; but I have no business
to see such things. Gay Greta I sweet harebells!
you are not sad nor strange to most people; you are
but bright water and blue blossoms; you shall not
be anything else to me, except that I cannot help
thinking you are a little alive — ^no one can help
thinking that.’ And thus, as Nature is bright,
serene, or gloomy, Scott takes her temper, and
paints her as she is; nothing of himself being ever
intruded, except that far-away Eolian tone, of which
he is unconscious; and sometimes a stray syllable
or two, like that about Blackford Hill, distinctly stat-
ing personal feeling, but all the more modestly for
that distinctness, and for the clear consciousness that
it is not the chiming brook, nor the cornfields, that
are sad, but only the boy that rests by thepi; so
returning on the instant to reflect, in all honesty,
the image of Nature as she is meant by all men to
be received; nor that in fine words, but in the first
that come ; nor with comment of far-fetched
thoughts, but with easy thoughts, such as all sensible
men ought to have in such places, only spoken
sweetly ; and evidently also with an undercurrent
of more profound reflection, which here and there
murmurs for a moment, and which I think, if we
choose, we may continually pierce down to, and
drink deeply from, but which Scott leaves us to
seek, or shun, at our pleasure.
§ 38, And in consequence of this unselfishness and
humility, Scott’s enjoyment of Nature ii incompar-
ably greater than that of any other poet I know.
All the rest carry their cares to her, and begin
maundering in her ears about their own affairs.
Tennyson goes out on a furzy common, and sees it
is calm autumn sunshine, but it gives him no
pleasure. He only remembers that it is
Dead calm in that noble bre ast
Which heaves but with the heaving deep.
296 OF MODERN LANDSCAPE [partiv
He sees a tbunder-olqud in the evening, and would
have ‘ doted and pored ’ on it, but cannot, for fear
it should bring the ship bad weather. Keats drinks
the beauty of Nature violently; but has no naore
real sympathy with her than he has with a bottle
of claret. His palate is fine; but he ‘ bursts joy’s
grape against it gets nothing but misery, and a
bitter taste of dregs, out of his desperate draught.
Byron and Shelley are nearly the same, only with
less truth of perception, and even more troublesome
selfi&hness. Wordsworth is more like Scott, and
understands how to be happy, but yet cannot alto-
gether rid himself of the sense that he is a philoso-
$her, and ought always to be saying something wise.
He has also a vague notion that Nature would not
be able to get on well without Wordsworth; and
finds a considerable part of his pleasure in looking
at himself as well as at her. But with Scott the
love is entirely humble and unselfish. ‘ I, Scott, am
nothing, and less than nothing; but these crags, and
heaths, and clouds, how great they are, how lovely,
how for ever to be beloved, only for their own silent,
thoughtless sake 1 ’
§ 30. This pure passion for nature in its abstract
being, is still increased in its intensity by the two
elements above taken notice of, — the love of anti-
quity, and the love of colour and beautiful form,
mortified in our streets, and seeking for food in the
wilderness and the ruin : both feelings, observe, in-
stinctive in Scott from his childhood, as everything
that makes a man great is always.
A®d well the lonely infant knew
Recesses where the wallflower grew,
And honeysuckle loved to crawl
Up the lone crag and ruined wall.
I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade
The sun in all its round surveyed.
Not that these could have been instinctive in a
child in the Middle Ages. The sentiments of a
people increase or diminish in intensity from gener-
ation to generation — every disposition of the parents
297
cHAP.xvi] OF MOrJERN LAKBSCAPE
affecting the Irame of the mind in their offspring :
the soldier’s child is born to be yet more a soldier,
and the politician’s to be still more a politician;
even the slightest colours of sentiment and affection
are transmitted to the heirs of life; and the crown-
ing expression of the mind of a people is given when
some infant of highest capacity, and sealed with
the impress of this national character, is born where
providential circumstances permit the full develop-
ment of the powers it has received straight from
Heaven, and the passions which it has inherited from
its fathers.
§ 40. This love of ancientness, and that of natural
beauty, associate themselves also in Scott with the
love of liberty, which was indeed at the root even of
all his Jacobite tendencies in politics. For, putting
aside certain predilections about landed property, and
family name, and ‘ gentlemanliness ’ in the club
sense of the word — ^respecting which I do not now
inquire whether they were weak or wise, — the main
element which makes Scott like Cavaliers better than
Puritans is, that he thinks the former free and
masterful as well as loyal; and the latter formal and
slavish. He is loyal, not so much in respect for law,
as in unselfish love for the king; and his sympathy
is quite as ready for any active borderer who breaks
the law, or fights the king, in what Scott thinks a
generous way, as for the king himself. Rebellion of
a rough, free, and bold kind he is always delighted
by; he only objects to rebellion on principle and in
form : bare-headed and open-throated treason he will
abet to any extent, but shrinks from it ifi a peaked
hat and starched collar : nay, politically, he only
delights in kingship itself, because he looks upon it
as the head and centre of liberty; and thinks that,
keeping hold of a king’s hand, one may get rid of
the cramps and fences of law; and that the people
may be governed by the whistle, as a Highland clan
on the open hill-side, instead of being shut up into
hurdled folds or hedged fields, as sheep or cattle left
masterless.
298 OF MODERN LANDSCAPE [partiv
§ 41, And thus Nature becomes dear to Scott in
a threefold way : dear to him, first, as containing
those remains or memories of the past, which he
cannot find in cities, and giving hope of PrsBtorian
mound or knight’s grave, in every green slope and
sh^de of its desolate places; — dear, secondly, in its
moorland liberty, which has for him just as high
a charm as the fenced garden had for the mediaeval;
For I was wayward, bold, and wild,
A self-willed imp— a grandame’s child ;
But, half a plague, and half a jest,
Was still endured, beloved, caressed :
For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask
The classic poet’s well-conned task ?
Nay, Erskine, nay. On the wild hill
Let the wild heathbell flourish still ;
Cherish the tulip, prune the vine ;
But freely let the woodbine twine.
And leave untrimmed the eglantine ;
— and dear to him, finally, in that perfect beauty,
denied alike in cities and in men, for which every
modem heart had begun at last to thirst, and Scott’s,
in its freshness and power, of all men’s, most
earnestly.
§ 42. And in this love of beauty, observe, that
(as I said we might except) the love of colour is a
leading element, his healthy mind being incapable
of losing, under any modem false teaching, its joy
in brilliancy of hue. Though not so subtle a colour-
ist as Dante, which, under the circumstances of the
age, he could not be, he depends quite as much upon
colour for his power or pleasure. And, in general,
if he does not mean to say much aboni things, the
one character which he wUl give is colour^ using it
with the most perfect mastery and faithfulness, up
to the point of possible modem perception. For in-
stance, if he has a sea-storm fco paint in a single
line, he does not, as a feebler poet would probably
have done, use any expression about the temper or
form of the waves ; does not call them angry or moun-
CHAP.xvi] OF MODEBN LANDSCAPE 299
tainouB. He is content to strike tkem out with two
dashes of Tintoret's favourite colours ;
The blackening wave tar edged with white ;
To inch and rock the aeamews fly.
There is no form in this. Nay, the main virtu| of
it is, that it gets rid of all form. The dark raging
of the sea — what form has that? But out of the
cloud of its darkness those lightning flashes of the
foam, coming at their terrible intervals — you need
no more.
Again : where he has to describe tents mingled
among oaks, he says nothing about the form of either
tent or tree, but only gives the two strokes of colour :
Thousand paviliona, white as snov).
Chequered the borough moor below,
Oft giving way, where still there stood
Some relics of the old oak wood,
That darkly huge did intervene,
And tamed the glaring white with green.
Again : of tents at Flodden :
Next morn the Baron climbed the tower.
To view, afar, the Scottish power,
Encamped on Flodden edge.
The white pavilions made a show,
Like remnants of the winter snow.
Along the dusky ridge.
Again : of trees mingled with dark rocks :
Until, where Teith’s young waters roll
Betwixt him and a wooded knoll,
That graced the sahU strath with greijjn,.,
The chapel of St Bride was seen.
Again ^ there is hardly any form, only smoke and
colour, in his celebrated description of Edinburgh :
The wandering eye could o^er it go,
And mark the distant city glow
With gloomy splendour red ;
For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow.
That round her sable turrets flow,
The morning beams were shed,
‘ |i# OF MODERN LANDSCAPE [partiv
And tinged them with a lustre proud.
Like that which streaks a thunder-cloud.
Such dusky grandeur clothed the height,
Where the huge Castle holds its state,
And all the steep slope down,
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Piled deep and massy, close and high.
Mine own romantic town !
But northward far, with purer blaze,
On Ochil mountains fell the rays.
And as each heathy top they kissed,
It gleamed a purple amethyst.
Yonder the shores of Fife you saw ;
Here Preston Bay and Berwick Law :
And, broad between them rolled
The gallant Frith the eye might note,
Whose islands on its bosom float,
Like emeralds chased in gold.
I do not like to spoil a fine passage by italicizing
it; but observe, the only hints at form, given
throughout, are in the somewhat vague words,
‘ ridgy ‘ massy * close and * high the whole
being still more obscured by modern mystery, in its
most tangible form of smoke. But the colours are
all definite; note the rainbow band of them — gloomy
or dusky red, sable (pure black), amethyst (pure
purple), green, and gold — a noble chord throughout;
and then, moved doubtless less by the smoky than the
amethystine part of the group,
Fitz Eustace’ heart felt closely pent,
The spur he to his charger lent,
And raised his bridle band,
Add, making demi volte in air,
Cried, ‘ Where ’s the coward would, not dare
To fight for such a land ? ’
I need not multiply examples : the reader can
easily trace for himself, through verse familiar to
us all, the force of these colour instincts. I will
therefore add only two passages, not so completely
known by heart as most of the poems in which they
occur.
CHAP.XVI] OF MODESN - LANDSCAPE 801
’Twas sileDice all. He laid him down
Where purple heath profusely strown,
And throatwort, with its azure hell,
And moss and thyme his cushion swell.
There, spent with toil, he listless eyed
The course of Greta’s playful tide ;
Beneath her banks, now eddying dun,
Now brightly gleaming to the sun,
As, dancing over rock and stone,
In yellow light her currents shone,
Matching in hue the favourite gem
Of Albin’s mountain diadem.
Then tired to watch the current play,
He turned his weary eyes away
To where the bank opposing showed
Its huge S(^uare cliffs through shaggy wood.
One, prominent above the rest,
Beared to the sun its pale grey breast ;
Around its broken summit grew
The hazel rude, and sable yew ;
A thousand varied lichens dyed
Its waste and weather- beaten side ;
And round its rugged basis lay,
By time or thunder rent away.
Fragments, that, from its frontlet torn.
Were mantled now by verdant thorn.
§ 43. Note, first, what an exquisite chord of colour
is given in the succession of this passage. It begins
with purple and blue; then passes to gold, or cairn-
gorm colour (topaz colour); then to 'pale grey^
through which the yellow passes into black; and
the black, through broken dyes of lichen, into green.
Note, secondly, — what is indeed so manifest through-
out Scott’s landscape as hardly to need pointing out,
— the love of rocks, and true understandiiig of their
colours and characters, opposed as it is in every
conceivable way to Dante’s hatred and misunder-
standing of them.
I have already traced, in various places, most of
the causes of this great difference; namely, first,
the ruggedness of northern temper (compare § 8
of the chapter* on the Nature of Gothic in The Stones
of Venice); then the really greater beauty of the
northern rocks, as noted when we were speaking of
OF MODERN LANDSCAPE [pARtiv
’the Apennine limestone ; then the lieeii of finding
beauty among them, if it were to be found anywhere,
— ^no well-arranged colours being any more to be
seen in dress* but only in rock lichens; and, finally,
the love of irregularity, liberty, and power springing
up in glorious opposition to laws of prosody, fasmon,
and the five orders. ,
§ 44. The other passage I have to quote is still
more interesting; because it has no form in it at all
except in one word (chalice), but wholly composes
its imagery either of colour, or of that delicate half-
believed life which we have seen to be so important
an element in modern landscape :
The summer dawn’s reflected hue
'l ” ' To purple chaiiyed Loch Katrine blue ;
Mildly and soft the western breeze
Just kissed the lake, just stirred the trees ;
And the pleased lakcy like maiden coy^
Trembled^ but dimpled not , for joy ;
The mountain-shadows on her breast
Were neither broken nor at rest ;
In bright uncertainty they lie,
Like future joys to Fancy’s eye.
The wateri-lily to the light
Her chalice reared of silver bright ;
The doe awoke, and to the lawn,
Begemmed with dew-drOi)s, led her fawn ;
The grey mist left the mountain-side ;
The torrent showed its glistening pride ;
Invisible in flecked sky.
The lark sent down her revelry ;
The blackbird and the speckled'^thrush
Good-morrow gave from brake and bush ;
< In answer cooed the cushat dove
Ker notes of peace, and rest, and love.
Two more coasiderations Arb,, hc^-wever, suggested
by the above passage. The first,, that the love of
natural history, excited by the continual attention
now given to all vdid landscape, heightens recipro-
cally the interest of that landscape, and becomes an
iinportant element in Scott’s description, leading him
to finish, down to the minutest speckling of breast,
and slightest shade of attributed emotion, the por-
OHAP.xVi] OF MOETERN LANDSCAPE 1S08
traiture of birds and animals; in strange op|>ositioii
to Homer % sligiitly named ‘ sea-crows, who have
care of the works of the sea and Dante’s singing-
birds, of undefined Species. Compare carefully a
passage, too long to be quoted — the 2nd and 8rd
stanzas of canto vi of Rokehy,
§ 45. The second, and the last point I have to
note, is Scott’s habit of drawing a slight moral from
every scene, just enough to excuse to his conscience
hi^ want of definite religious feeling; and that this
slight moral is almost always melancholy. Here
he has stopped short without entirely expressing it
The mountain shadows .
. lie
Like future jcys to Fancy^s eye.
His completed thought would be that those future
joys, like the mountain shadows, were never to be
attained. It occurs fully uttered in many other
places He seems to have been constantly rebuking
his own worldly pride and vanity, but never purpose-
fully :
The foam*^lobes on her eddies ride,
Thick as the schemes of huma® pride
That down life’s current drive amain,
As frail, as frothy, and as vain.
Foxglove, and nightshade, side by side.
Emblems of punishment and pride.
Her dark eye flashed ; she paused, and sighed
‘ Ah, what have I to do with pride ! ’
And hear the thought he gathers from the sunset
(noting first the Tumerian colour — as usual, its
principal element) :
The sultry summer day is done,
The western hills have hid the sun,
But moutitain peak and village spire
Retain reflection of hip fire.
Old Barnarjd’s towers are purple still,
To those that gaze from Toller Hill ;
604 OF MODERN LANDSCAPE [partiv
Distant and high the tower of Bowes,
Like steel upon the anvil glows ;
And Stanmore’s ridge, behind that lay,
Rich with the spoils of parting day,
In crimson and in gold arrayed,
Streaks yet awhile the closing shade ;
Then slow resigns to darkening heaven
The tints which brighter hours had given.
Thus, aged men, full loath and slow,
The vanities of life forego,
And count their youthful follies o^er
Till memory lends her light no more.
That is, as far as I remember, one of the most
finished pieces of sunset he has given; and it has
a woful moral; yet one which, with Scott, is in-
separable from the scene.
Hark, again :
’Twere sweet to mark the setting day
On Bourhope’s lonely top decay ;
And, as it faint and feeble died
On the broad lake and mountain’s side,
To say, * Thus pleasures fade away ;
Youth, talents, beauty, thus decay.
And leave us dark, forlorn, and grey. ’
And again, hear Bertram ;
Mine be the eve of tropic sun :
With disk like battle-target red,
He rushes to his burning bed,
Dyes the wide wave with bloody light.
Then sinks at once ; and all is night.
In all places of this kind, where a passing thought
is suggesteii by some external scene, that tnought is
at once a slight and sad one. Scott’s deeper moral
sense is marked in the conduct of his stories, and
in casual reflections or exclamations arising out of
their plot, and therefore sincerely uttered; as that
of Marmion ;
Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive 1
But the reflections which are founded, not on
805 .
CHAP, XVI] OF MODERN LANDSCAPE
eveaits, but on scenes, are, for the most part, shallow,
partly insincere, and, as far as sincere, sorrowful.
This habit of ineffective dreaming and moralizing over
passing scenes, of which the earliest type I know is
given in J.aques, is, as aforesaid, usually the satis-
faction made to our modern consciences for the want
of a sincere acknowledgment of God in nature : and
Shakspeare has marked it as the characteristic of a
mind ‘ compact of jars * (Act ii, Sc. vii, As You
Like It). That description attaches but too accur-
ately to all the moods which we have traced in the
moderns generally, and in Scott as the first repre-
sentative of them; and the question now is, what
this love of landscape, so composed, is likely to
lead us to, and what use can be made of it.
We began our investigation, it will be remembered,
in order to determine whether landscape-painting
was worth studying or not. We have now reviewed
the three principal phases of temper in the civilized
human race, and we find that landscape has been
mostly disregarded by great men, or cast into a
second place, until now; and that now it seems
dear to us, partly in consequence of our faults, and
partly owing to accidental circumstances, soon, in
all likelihood, to pass away : and there seems great
room for question still, whether our love of it is a
permanent and healthy feeling, or only a healthy
crisis in a generally diseased state of mind. If the
former, society will for ever hereafter be affected
by its results ; and Turner, the first great landscape-
painter, must take a place in the history of nations
corresponding in art accurately to that* of Bacon
in philosophy; Bacon having first opened the study
of the laws of material nature, when, formerly, men
had thought only of the laws of human mind; and
Turner having first opened the study of the aspect
of material nature, when, before, men had thought
only of the aspect of the human form. Whether,
therefore, the love of landscape be trivial and tran-
sient, or important and permanent, it now becomes
necessary to consider. We have, I think, data
M. P.,111. X
THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE [paetiv
.enough before us for the solution of the question,
and we will enter upon it, accordingly, in the follow-
ing chapter.
CHAPTER XVII
THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE
§ 1. Supposing then the preceding conclusions
correct, respecting the grounds and component ele-
ments of the pleasure which the moderns take in
landscape, we have here to consider what are the
probable or usual effects of this pleasure. Is it a
safe or a seductive one? May we wisely boast of it,
and unhesitatingly indulge it? or is it rather a senti-
ment to be despised when it is slight, and condemned
when it is intense; a feeling which disinclines us to
labour, and confuses us in thought; a joy only to
the inactive and the visionary, incompatible with
the duties of life, and the accuracies of reflection?
§ 2. It seems to me that, as matters stand at
present, there is considerable ground for the latter
opinion. We saw, in the preceding chapter, that our
love of nature had been partly forced upon us by
mistakes in our social economy, and led to no dis-
tinct issues of action or thought. And when we look
to Scott — ^the man who feels it most deeply — ^for
some explanation of its effect upon him, we find
a curious tone of apology (as if for an involuntary
folly) running through his confessions of such senti-
ment, and a still more curious inability to define,
beyond a certain point, the character of tnis emotion.
He has lost the company of his friends among the
hills, and turns to these last for comfort. He says,
‘ there is a pleasure in the pain ’ consisting in such
thoughts
As oft awake
By lone St Mary’s silent lake ;
but, when we look for some definition of these
thoughts, all that we are told is, that they compose
CHiLP. xvn] TRT, MORAL OF LANDSCAPE 807
A mingled sentiment
Of resignation and content i —
a sentiment which, I suppose, many people can attain
to on the loss of their friends, without the help of
lakes or mountains ; while Wordsworth definitely and
positively affirms that thought has nothing whatever
to do with the matter, and that though, in his youth,
the cataract and wood ‘ haunted him like a passion \
it was without the help of any ‘ remoter charm, by
thought supplied.’
§ 8. There is not, however, any question, but that
both Scott and' Wordsworth are here mistaken in their
analysis of their feelings. Their delight, so far from
being without thought, is more than half made up of
thought, but of thought in so curiously languid and
neutralized a condition that they cannot trace it.
The thoughts are beaten to a powder so small that
they know not what they are; they know only that
in such a state they are not good for much, and
disdain to call them thoughts. But the way in which
thought, even thus broken, acts in producing the
delight will be understood by glancing back to §§ 9
and 10 of the tenth chapter, in which we observed
the power of the imagination in exalting any visible
object, by gathering round it, in farther vision, all
the facts properly connected with it; this being, as
it were, a spiritual or second sight, multiplying the
power of enjoyment according to the fulness of the
vision. For, indeed, although in all lovely nature
there is, first, an excellent degree of simple beauty,
addressed to the eye alone, yet often what tmpresses
us most will form but a very small portion of that
visible beauty. That beauty may, for instance, be
composed of lovely flowers and glittering streams,
and blue sky and white clouds; and yet the thing
that impresses us most, and which we should be
sorriest to lose, may be a thin grey film on the
extreme horizon, not so large, in the space of the
scene it occupies, as a piece of gossamer on a near
^ Marmion, Introduction to canto ii.
•THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE [partiv
at hand bush, nor in any wise prettier to the eye
than the gossamer; but, because the gossamer is
known by us for a little bit of spider’s work, and
the other grey film is known to mean a mountain
ten thousand feet high, inhabited by a race of noble
mountaineers, we are solemnly impressed by the
aspect of it; and yet, all the while, the thoughts
and knowledge which cause us to receive this im-
pression are so obscure that we are not conscious of
them; we think wc are only enjoying the visible
scene; and the very men whose minds are fullest
of such thoughts absolutely deny, as we have just
heard, that they owe their pleasure to anything but
the eye, or that the pleasure consists in anything else
than ‘ Tranquillity
§ 4. And observe, farther, that this comparative
Dimness and Untraceableness of the thoughts which
are the sources of our admiration, is not a fault in
the thoughts, at such a time. It is, on the contrary,
a necessary condition of their subordination to the
pleasure of Sight. If the thoughts were more distinct
we should not see so well; and beginning definitely
to think, we must comparatively cease to see. In the
instance just supposed, as long as we look at the
film of mountain or Alp, with only an obscure con-
sciousness of its being the source of mighty rivers,
that consciousness adds to our sense of its sublimity ;
and if we have ever seen the Rhine or the Rhone
near their mouths, our knowledge, so long as it is
only obscurely suggested, adds to our admiration of
the Alp;^ but once let the idea define itself — once
let us begin to consider seriously what rivers flow
from that mountain, to trace their course, and to recall
determinately our memories of their distant aspects,
— and we cease to behold the Alp; or, if we still
behold it, it is only as a point in a map which we
are painfully designing, or as a subordinate object
which we strive to thrust aside, in order to make
room for our remembrances of Avignon or Rotterdam.
Again : so long as our idea of the multitudes who
inhabit the ravines at its foot remains indistinct, that
CHAP. XVII] THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE 309
idea comes to the aid of all the other associations
which increase our delight. But let it once arrest
us, and entice us to follow out some clear course
of thought respecting the causes of the prosperity
or misfortune of the Alpine villagers, and the snowy
peak again ceases to be visible, or holds its place only
as a white spot upon the retina, while we pursue
our meditations upon the religion or the political
economy of the mountaineers.
§ 5. It is thus evident that a curiously balanced
condition of the powers of mind is necessary to in-
duce full admiration of any natural scene. Let those
powers be themselves inert, and the mind vacant of
knowledge, and destitute of sensibility; and the
external object becomes little more to us than it is
to birds or insects; we fall into the temper of the
clown. On the other hand, let the reasoning powers
be shrewd in excess, the knowledge vast, or sensi-
bility intense, and it will go hard but that the visible
object will suggest so much that it shall be soon itself
forgotten, or become, at the utmost, merely a kind of
key-note to the course of purposeful thought. New-
ton, probably, did not perceive whether the apple
which suggested his meditations on gravity w^as
withered or rosy; nor could Howard be affected by
the picturesqueness of the architecture which held
the sufferers it was his occupation to relieve.
§ 6. This wandering away in thought from the
thing seen to the business of life, is not, however,
peculiar to men of the highest reasoning powers,
or most active benevolence. It takes place more or
less in nearly all persons of average meiffcal endow-
ment. They see and love what is beautiful, but
forget their admiration of it in following some train
of thought which it suggested, and which is of more
personal interest to them. Suppose that three or
four persons come in sight of a group of pine-trees,
not having seen pines for some time. One, perhaps
an engineer, is struck by the manner in which their
roots hold the ground, and sets himself to examine
their fibres, in a few minutes retaining little more
310 THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE [partiv
consciousness of the beauty of the trees than if he
were a rope-maker uKtwisting the strands of a cable :
to another, the ‘Sight of the trees calls up some
happy association, and presently he forgets them,
and pursues the memories they summoned : a third
is struck by certain groupings of their colours, useful
to him as an artist, which he proceeds/ immediately
to note mechanically for future use, mth as little
feeling as a cook setting down the constituents of a
newly discovered dish; and a fourth, impressed by
the wild coiling of boughs and roots, will begin to
change them in his fancy into dragons and monsters,
and lose his grasp of the scene in fantastic metamor-
phosis : while, in the mind of the man who has most
the power of contemplating the thing itself, all these
perceptions and trains of idea are partially present,
not distinctly, but in a mingled and perfect harmony.
He will not see the colours of the tree so well as
the artist, nor its fibres so well as the engineer; he
will not altogether share the emotion of the senti-
mentalist, nor the trance of the idealist; but fancy,
and feeling, and perception, and imagination, will
all obscurely meet and balance themselves in him,
and he will see the pine-trees somewhat in this
manner ;
Worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove ;
Huge trunks ! and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved ;
Nor unintonned with Phantasy, and looks
That «^breaten the profane ; a pillared shade,
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
Perennially, — beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked
With unrejoicing berries, ghostly Shapes
May meet at noontide ; Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight ; Death the Skeleton,
And Time the Shadow ; there to celebrate,
As in a natural temple scattered o’er
With altars undisturbed with mossy stone,
United worship.
cHAf. ?LVII] THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE 811
§ 7. The power, therefore, of thus fully mrceiving
any natural object depends oil oi^^'beiiig able^to group
and fasten all our fancies about ft as a centre J making
a garland of thoughts for it, in which eadh^^^ separate
thought is subdued and shortened of its own strength,
in order to fit it for harmony with others; the in-
tensity of ,pur enjoyment of the object depending,
first, on it's own beauty, and then on the richness
of the garland. And men who have this habit of
clustering and harmonizing their thoughts are a
little too apt to look scoinfully upon the harder
workers who tear iiae bouquet to pieces to examine
the stems. This was the chief narrowness of Words-
worth’s mind : b© could not understand that to break
a rock with a hammer in search of crystal may some-
times be ^ act not ' disgraceful to ; human nature,
and that th dissect a flower may sometimes be as
proper as to dream over it; whereas all experience
goes to teabh us, that among men of average intel-
lect the most useful members of society are the dis-
sectors, not the dreamers. It is not that they love
nature or beauty less, but that they love result,
effect, and progress more; and when we glance
broadly along the starry crowd of benefactors to the
human race, and guides of human thought, we shall
find that this dreaming love of natural beauty — or
at least its expression — ^has been more or less checked
by them all, and subordinated either to hard work or
watching of human nature. Thus in all the classical
and medieeval periods, it was, as we have seen, sub-
ordinate to agriculture, war, and religion; and in
the modern |)eriod, in which it has becorfte far more
powerful, obs^^te in what persons it is chiefly mani-
fested.
(1.) It is subordinate in
Bacon.
Milton.
Johnson.
Richardson.
Goldsmith.
Young.
(2.) It is intense in
Mrs Radclyffe.
St Pierre.
Shenstone.
Byron.
Shelley.
Keats.
M THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE [part iv
(L) It is subordinate in (2.) It is intense in
Newton. Burns.
Howard. Eugene Sue.
Fenelon. G-eorge Sand.
Pascal. Dumas.
§ 8. I have purposely omitted the names of Words-
worth, Tennyson, and Scott, in the second list, be-
cause, glancing at the two columns as they now
stand, we may, I think, draw some useful conclu-
sions -from the high honourableness and dignity of
the names on one side, and the comparative slight-
ness of those on the other — conclusions which may
help us to a better understanding of Scott and Tenny-
son themselves. Glancing, I say, down those columns
in their present form, we shall at once perceive that
the intense love of nature is, in modern times,
characteristic of persons not of the first order of
intellect, but of brilliant imagination, quick sym-
pathy, and undefined religious principle, suffering
also usually under strong and ill-governed passions :
while in the same individual it will be found to vary
at different periods, being, for the most part, strong-
est in youth, and associated with force of emotion,
and with indefinite and feeble powers of thought;
also, throughout life, perhaps developing itself most
at times when the mind is slightly unhinged by love,
grief, or some other of the passions.
§ 9. But, on the other hand, while these feelings
of delight in natural objects cannot be construed into
signs of the highest mental powers, or purest moral
principles, *we see that they are assuredly indicative
of minds above the usual standard of power, and
endowed with sensibilities of great preciousness to
humanity ; so that those who find themselves entirely
destitute of them, must make tfiis want a subject
of humiliation, not of pride. The apathy which can-
not perceive beauty is very different from the stern
energy which disdains it; and the coldness of heart
which receives no emotion from external nature, is
not to be confounded with the wisdom of purpose
CHAP, xvn] THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE 318
whick represses emotion in action. In the case of
most men, it is neither acuteness of the reason, nor
breadth of humanity, which shields them from the
impressions of natural scenery, but rather low
anxieties, vain discontents, and mean pleasures; and
for one who is blinded to the works of God by pro-
found abstraction or lofty purpose, tens of thousands
have their eyes sealed by vulgar selfishness, and their
intelligence crushed by impious care.
Observe, then : we have, among mankind in
general, the three orders of being; — the lowest, sordid
and selfish, which neither sees nor feels; the second,
noble and sympathetic, but which sees and feels
without concluding or acting; the third and highest,
which loses sight in resolution, and feeling in work
1 The investigation of this subject becomes, therefore, diffi-
cult beyond all other parts of our inquiry, since precisely the
same sentiments may arise in different minds from totally
opposite causes ; and the extreme of frivolity may sometimes
for a moment desire the same things as the extreme of moral
power and dignity. In the following extract from Marriage,
the sentiment expressed by Lady Juliana (the ineffably foolish
and frivolous heroine of the story) is as nearly as possible
what Dante would have felt, under the same circumstances :
‘ The air was soft and genial ; not a cloud stained the bright
azure of the heavens ; and the sun shone out in all his splen-
dour, shedding life and beauty even over the desolate heath-
clad hills of Glenfern. But, after they had journeyed a few
miles, suddenly emerging from the valley, a scene of match-
less beauty burst at once upon the eye. Before them lay the
dark blue waters of Ijochmarlie, reflecting, as in a mirror,
every surrounding object, and bearing on its placid, trans-
parent bosom a fleet of herring-boats, the drapery of whose
black, suspended nets contrasted, with picture^jjjue effect, the
white sails of the larger vessels, which were vainly spread to
catch a breeze. All around, rocks, meadows, woods, and hills
mingled in wild and lovely irregularity.
‘ Not a breath was stirring, not a sound was heard, save the
rushing of a waterfall, the tinkling of some silver rivulet, or
the calm rippling of the tranquil lake ; now and then, at
intervals, the fisherman’s Gaelic ditty, chanted as he lay
stretched on the sand in some sunny nook; or the shrill,
distant sound of childish glee. How delicious to the feeling
heart to behold so fair a scene of unsophisticated nature, and
to listen to her voice alone, breathing the accents of innocence
814 THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE [partiv
Thus, even in Scott and Wordsworth themselves,
the lote of nature is more or less associated with
their weaknesses. Scott shows it most in the cruder
compositions of his youth, his perfect powers of mind
being displayed only in dialogues with which descrip-
tion has nothing whatever to do. Wordsworth’s dis-
tinctive work was a war with pomp and pretence,
and a display of the majesty of simple feelings and
humble hearts, together with high reflective truth in
his analysis of the courses of politics and ways of
men; without these, his love of nature would have
been comparatively worthless.
§ 10. ‘ If this be so, it is not well to encourage the
observance of landscape, any more than other ways
of dreamily and ineffectually spending time?’
Stay a moment. We have hitherto observed this
love of natural beauty only as it distinguishes one
man from another, not as it acts for good or evil
on those minds to which it necessarily belongs. It
may, on the whole, distinguish weaker men from
stronger men, and yet in those weaker men may be
of some notable use. It may distinguish Byron from
St Bernard, and Shelley from Sir Isaac Newton, and
yet may, perhaps, be the best thing that Byron and
Shelley possess — a saving element in them; just as
a rush may be distinguished from an oak by its bend-
ing, and yet the bending may bo the saving element
in the rush, and an admirable gift in its place and
and joy ! But none of the party who now gazed on it had
minds capable of being touched with the emotions it was
calculated to inspire.
* Henry, inefeed, was rapturous in his expressions of admira-
tion; but he concluded his panegyrics by wondering his
brother did not keep a cutter, and resolving to pass a night on
board one of the herring-boats, that he might eat the fish in
perfection.
‘ Lady Juliana thought it might be very pretty, if, instead of
those frightful rocks and shabby cottages, there could be villas,
and gardens, and lawns, and conservatories, and summer-
houses, and statues.
‘ Miss Bella observed, if it was hers, she would cut down the
woods, and level the hills, and have races.’
CHAP, xvn] THE MORAL OF tAJ^DSOAFE 8lS
way. So that, although St Bernard journeys all
day by the Lake of Geneva, and asks at evening
‘ where it is and Byron learns by it * to love earth
only for its earthly sake ’ it does not fellow that
Byron, hating men, was the worse for loving the
earth, nor that St Bernard, loving men, was the
better or wiser for being blind to it. And this will
become still more manifest if we examine somewhat
farther into the nature of this instinct, as character-
istic especially of youth.
§ 11. We saw above that Wordsworth described
the feeling as independent of thought, and, in the
particular place then quoted, he therefore speaks of
it depreciatingly. But in other places he does not
speak of it depreciatingly, but seems to think the ab-
sence of thought involves a certain nobleness, as in
the passage already quoted, Vol. II, Chap. XIV, § 1 ;
lu such high hour
Of visitation from the living God
Thought was not.
And he refers to the intense delight which he himself
felt, and which he supposes other men feel, in nature,
during their thoughtless youth, as an intimation of
their immortality, and a joy which indicates their
having come fresh from the hand of God.
Now, if Wordsworth be right in supposing this
feeling to be in some degree common to all men,
and most vivid in youth, we may question if it can
be entirely explained as I have now tried to explain
it. For if it entirely depended on multitudes of
ideas, clustering about a beautiful objqpt, it might
seem that the youth could not feel it so strongly as
the man, because the man knows more, and must
have more ideas to make the garland of. Still less
can we suppose the pleasure to be of that melancholy
and languid kind, which Scott defines as ‘ Resig-
nation ’ and ‘ Content boys being not distinguished
for either of those characters, but for eager effort,
and delightsome discontent. If Wordsworth is at all
1 Childe Harold, canto iii, st. 71.
816 ^ THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE [paetiv
right in this matter, therefore, there must surely
be some other element in the feeling not yet detected.
§ 12. Now, in a question of this subtle kind, re-
lating to a period of life when self-examination is
rare, and expression imperfect, it becomes exceed-
ingly difficult to trace, with any certainty, the move-
ments of the minds of others, nor always easy to
remember those of our own. I cannot, from observ-
ation, form any decided opinion as to the extent in
which this strange delight in nature influences the
hearts of young persons in general; and, in stating
what has passed in my own mind, I do not mean to
draw any positive conclusion as to the nature of the
feeling in other children; but the inquiry is clearly
one in which personal experience is the only safe
ground to go upon, though a narrow one; and I will
make no excuse for talking about myself with refer-
ence to this subject, because, though there is much
egotism in the world, it is often the last thing a
man thinks of doing — and, though there is much
work to be done in the world, it is often the best
thing a man can do — ^to tell the exact truth about
the movements of his own mind; and there is this
farther reason, that whatever other faculties I may or
may not possess, this gift of taking pleasure in land-
scape I assuredly possess in a greater degree than
most men; it having been the ruling passion of my life,
and the reason for the choice of its field of labour.
§ 13. The first thing which I remember, as an
event in life, was being taken by my nurse to the
brow of Friar’s Crag on Derwentwater ; the iutense
joy, mingle^? with aw^e, that I had in looking through
the hollows in the mossy roots, over the crag, into
the dark lake, has associated itself more or less with
all twining roots of trees ever since. Two other
things I remember, as, in a sort, beginnings of life;
crossing Shapfells (being let out of the chaise to run
up the hills), and going through Glenfarg, near Kin-
ross, in a winter’s morning, when the rooks were
hung with icicles; these being culminating points
^in an early life of more travelling than is usually
CHAP, xvn] THE MORAL OF CANDSCAPE- 81T
indulged to a child. In such journeyings, whenever
they brought me near hills, and in all mountain
ground and scenery, I had a pleasure, as early as
I can remember, and continuing till I was eighteen
or twenty, infinitely greater than any which has been
since possible to me in anything; comparable for
intensity only to the joy of a lover in being near a
noble and kind mistress, but no more explicable or
definable than that feeling of love itself. Only thus
much I can remember, respecting it, which is im-
portant to our present subject.
§ 14. First : it was never independent of associated
thought. Almost as soon as I could see or hear, I
had got reading enough to give me associations with
all kinds of scenery; and mountains, in. particular,
were always partly confused with those of my favour-
ite book, Scott’s Monastery ; so that Glenfarg and
all other glens were more or less enchanted to me,
filled with forms of hesitating creed about Christie of
the Clint Hill, and the monk Eustace; and with a
general presence of White Lady everywhere. I also
generally knew, or was told by my father and
mother, such simple facts of history as were neces-
sary to give more definite and justifiable association
to other scenes which chiefly interested me, such as
the ruins of Lochleven and Kenilworth; and thus
my pleasure in mountains or ruins was never, even
in earliest childhood, free from a certain awe and
melancholy, and general sense of the meaning of
death, though, in its principal influence, entirely
exhilarating and gladdening.
§ 15. Secondly ; it was partly dependent on con-
trast with a very simple and unamused mode of
general life : I was born in London, and accustomed,
for two or three years, to no other prospect than
that of the brick walls over the way; had no brothers
nor sisters, nor companions; and though I could
always make myself happy in a quiet way, the beauty
of the mountains had an additional charm of change
and adventure which a country-bred child would .not
have felt.
318 THE MOEAL OF LANDSCAPE [pabtiv
§ 16, Thirdly : there was no definite religious
feeling mingled with it. - I partly believed in ghosts
smd fairies; but supposed tnat angels belonged en-
tirely to the Mosaic dispensation, and cannot remem-
ber any single thought or feeling connected with
fchem. I believed that God was in heaven, arid could
hear me and see me; but this gave me neither
pleasure nor pain, and I seldom thought of it at all.
I never thought of nature as God’s work, but as a
separate fact or existence.
§ 17. Fourthly : it was entirely unaccompanied by
L owers of reflection or invention. Every fancy that
had about nature was put into my head by some
book; and I never reflected about anything till I
grew older; and then, the more I reflected, the less
nature was precious to me : I could then make my-
self happy, by thinking, in the dark, or in the dullest
scenery ; and the beautiful scenery became less
essential to my pleasure.
§ 18. Fifthly : it was, according to its strength,
inconsistent with every evil feeling, with spite, anger,
covetousness, discontent, and every other hateful
passion; but would associate itself deeply with every
just and noble sorrow, joy, or affection. It had not,
however, always the power to repress what was in-
consistent with it; and, though only after stout con-
tention, might at last be crushed by what it had
partly repressed. And as it only acted by setting one
impulse against another, though it had much power
in moulding the character, it had hardly any in
strengthening it; it formed temperament, but never
instilled prir.ciple ; it kept me generally good-
humoured and kindly, but could not teach me per-
severance or self-denial : what firmness or principle
I had was quite independent of it; and it came
itself nearly as often in the form of a temptation as
of a safeguard, leading me to ramble over hills when
I should have been learning lessons, and lose days
in reveries which I might have spent in doing kind-
nesses.
§ 19. Lastly ; although there was no definite re-
CHAP, xvii] THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE il9
ligious sentiment mingled with it, there was a con-
tinual perception of Sanctity in the whole of nature,
from the slightest thing to the vastest; — ^an instinc-
tive awe, mixed with delight; an indefinable thrill,
such as v /0 sometimes imagine to indicate the pre-
sence of a disembodied spirit. I could only feel this
perfectly when I was alone ; and then it would often
make me shiver from head to foot with the joy and
fear of it, when after being some time away from
hills, I first got to the shore of a mountain river,
where the brown water circled among the pebbles,
or when I saw the first swell of distant land against
the sunset, or the first low broken wall, covered with
mountain moss. I cannot in the least describe the
feeling; but I do not think this is my fault, nor
that of the English language, for, I am afraid, no
feeling is describable. If we had to explain even the
sense of bodily hunger to a person who had never
felt it, we should be hard put to it for words; and
this joy in nature seemed to me to come of a sort
of heart-hunger, satisfied with the presence of a
Great and Holy Spirit. These feelings remained in
their full intensity till I was eighteen or twenty, and
then, as the reflective and practical power increased,
and the ‘ cares of this world ' gained upon me, faded
gradually away, in the manner described by Words-
worth in his Intimations of Immortality,
§ 20. I cannot, of course, tell how far I am justified
in supposing that these sensations may be reasoned
upon as common to children in general. In the same
degree they are not of course common, otherwise
children would be, most of them, very digerent from
what they are in their choice of pleasures. But, as
far as such feelings exist, I apprehend they are more
or less similar in their nature and influence; only
producing different characters according to the ele-
ments with which they are mingled. Thus, a very
religious child may give up many pleasures to which
its instincts lead it, for the sake of irksome duties;
and an inventive child would mingle its love of nature
with watchfulness of human sayings and doings :
THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE [past it
but I believe the feelings I have endeavoured to
describe are the pure landscape-instinct; and the
likelihoods of good or evil resulting from them may
be reasoned upon as generally indicating the useful-
ness or danger of the modern love and study of land-
scape.
§ 21. And, first, observe that the charm of romantic
association (§ 14) can be felt only by the modem
European child. It rises eminently out of the con-
trast of the beautiful past with the frightful and
monotonous present; and it depends for its force
on the existence of ruins and traditions, on the
remains of architecture, the traces of battle fields,
and the precursorship of eventful history. The in-
stinct to which it appeals can hardly be felt in
America, and every day that either beautifies our
present architecture and dress, or overthrows a stone
of mediaeval monument, contributes to weaken it in
Europe. Of its influence on the mind of Turner and
Prout, and the permanent results which, through
them, it is likely to effect, I shall have to speak
presently.
§ 22. Again : the influence of surprise in producing
the delight, is to be noted as a suspicious or evanes-
cent element in it. Observe, my pleasure was
chiefly (§ 19) when I first got into beautiful scenery,
out of London. The enormous influence of novelty —
the way in which it quickens observation, sharpens
sensation, and exalts sentiment — is not half enough
taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful
matter. I think that what Wordsworth speaks of as
a glory in |he child, because it has come fresh from
God^s hands, is in reality nothing more than the
freshness of all things to its newly opened sight. I
find that by keeping long away from hills, I can
in great part still restore the old childish feeling
about them; and the more I live and work among
them, the more it vanishes.
§ 23. This evil is evidently common to all minds;
Wordsworth himself mourning over it in the same
poem :
CHAP, xvn] THE MORAL OP LAI5D8CAPE 821
Onstom hangs upon us, with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.
And if we grow impatient under it, and seek to
recover the mental energy by more quickly repeated
and bri^ter novelty, it is all over with our enjoy-
ment. There is no cure for this evil, any more than
for the weariness of the imagination already de-
scribed, but in patience and rest : if we try to obtain
perpetual change, change itself wdll become monoton-
ous; and then we are reduced to that old despair,
‘ If water chokes, what will you drink after it?’
And the two points of practical wisdom in this matter
are, first, to be content with as little novelty as
possible at a time; and, secondly, to preserve, as
much as possible in the world, the sources of novelty.
§ 24. I say, first, to be content with as little
change as possible. If the attention is awake, and
the feelings in proper train, a turn of a country road,
with a cottage beside it, which we have not seen
before, is as much as we need for refreshment; if
we hurry past it, and take two cottages at a time,
it is already too much : hence, to any person who
has all his senses about him, a quiet walk along not
more than ten or twelve miles of road a day, is the
most amusing of all travelling; and all travelling
becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.
Going by railroad I do not consider as travelling at
all; it is merely ‘ being sent ’ to a place, and very
little different from becoming a parcel; the next step
to it would of course be telegraphic transport, of
which, however, I suppose it has been truly said by
Octave Feuillet, **
II y mrait des gens assez hetes pour trouver 9^ amusant.^
If we walk more than ten or twelve miles, it breaks
up the day too much; leaving no time for stopping
at the stream sides or shady banks, or for any work at
the end of the day; besides that the last few miles
are apt to be done in a hurry, and may then be con-
1 Scknes et Proverbes. La Crise; (Sc^ne en caleche, hors
Paris).
m THE MOBAL OF LANDSCAPE [paetiv
sidered as lost ground. But if, advancing thus
slowly, after some days we approach any more inter-
esting scenery, every yard of the changeful ground
becomes precious and piquant; and the continual
increase of hope, and of surrounding beauty, affords
one of the most exquisite enjoyments possible to the
healthy mind; besides that real knowledge is ac-
quired of whatever it is the object of travelling to
learn, and a certain sublimity given to all places,
so attained, by the true sense of the spaces of earth
that separate them. A man who really loves travel-
ling would as soon consent to pack a day of such
happiness into an hour of railroad, as one who loved
eating would agree, if it w'ere possible, to concen-
trate his dinner into a pill.
§ 25. And, secondly, I say that it is wisdom to
preserve as much as possible the innocent sources
of novelty; — not definite inferiorities of one place
to another, if such can be done away; but differ-
ences of manners and customs, of language and
architecture. The greatest effort ought especially to
be made by all wise and far-sighted persons, in the
present crisis of civilization, to enforce the distinc-
tion betw^een wholesome reform, and heartless aban-
donment of ancestral custom ; between kindly
fellowship of nation with nation, and ape-hke adop-
tion, by one, of the habits of another. It is ludi-
crously woful to see the luxurious inhabitants of
London and Paris rushing over the Continent (as they
say, to see it), and transposing every place, as far
as lies in their power, instantly into a likeness of
Regent Street and the Rue de la Paix, which they
ueed not certainly have come so far to see. Of this
evil I shall have more to say hereafter; meantime
I return to our main subject.
§ 26. The next character we have to note in the
landscape -instinct (and on this much stress is to
be laid) , is its total inconsistency with all evil passion ;
its absolute contrariety (whether in the contest it
were crushed or not) to all care, hatred, envy,
anxiety, and moroseness. A feeling of this kind is
CHAP, xvii] THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE 325
assuredly not one to be lightly repressed, or treated
with contempt.
But how, if it be so, the reader asks, can it be
characteristic of passionate and unprincipled men,,
like Byron, SheUey, and such others, and not
characteristic of the noblest and most highly prin-
cipled men?
First, because it is itself a passion, and therefore
likely to be characteristic of passionate men. Secondly,,
because it is (§ 18) wholly a separate thing from
moral principle, and may or may not be joined to^
strength of will, or rectitude of purpose only, this,
much is always observable in the men whom it
characterizes, that, whatever their faults or failings,,
they fdways understand and love noble qualities of
character; they can conceive (if not certain phases
of piety), at all events, self-devotion of the highest
kind; they delight in all that is good, gracious, and
noble; and, though warped often to take delight also
in what is dark or degraded, that delight is mixed
with bitter self-reproach; or else is wanton, careless,
or affected, while their delight in noble things is con-
stant and sincere.
§ 27. Look back to the two lists given above, § 7.
I have not lately read anything by Mrs Iladclyffe
or George Sand, and cannot, therefore, take instances-
from tl^m. Keats hardly introduced human char-
acter into his work; but glance over the others, and
1 Compare the characters of Fleur de Marie and Rigolette,
in the Mysteres da Paris. I know no other instance in which
the two tempers are so exquisitely delineated and opposed.
Read carefully the beautiful pastoral, in the eighth chapter of
the first Part, where Fleur de Marie is first taken into the
fields under Montmartre, and compare it with the sixth of the
second Part, its accurately traced companion sketch, noting
carefully Rigolette’s ‘ Non, je deteste la campagne.' She does
not, however, dislike flowers, or birds : ‘ Cette caisse de bois,
que Rigolette appellait le jardin de ses oiseaux, 4tait remplie
de terre recouverte de mousse, pendant Thiver. Elle travail-
lait aupres de la fenStre ouverte, A-demi-voil4e par un verdoy-
ant rideau de pois de senteur roses, de capuciues oranges, de
volubilis bleus et blancs.'
^4 THE MOKAL OF LANDSCAPE [partiv
note the general tone of their conceptions. Take
St Pierre’s Virginia, Byron’s Myrrha, Angiolina, and
Marina, and Eugene Sue’s Fleur de Marie; and out
of the other list you will only be able to find Pamela,
Clementina, and, 1 suppose, Clarissa to put beside
them; and these will not more than match Myrrha
and Marina; leaving Fleur de Marie and Virginia
rivalless. Then meditate a little, with all justice
and mercy, over the two groups of names; and I
think you will, at last, feel that there is a pathos
and tenderness of heart among the lovers of nature
in the second list, of which it is nearly impossible to
estimate either the value or the danger; that the
sterner consistency of the men in the first may, in
great part, have arisen only from the, to them, most
merciful, appointment of having had religious teach-
ing or disciplined education in their youth; while
their want of love for nature, whether that love be
originally absent, or artificially repressed, is to none
of them an advantage. Johnson’s indolence. Gold-
smith’s improvidence. Young’s worldliness, Milton’s
severity, and Bacon’s servility, might all have been
less, if they could in any wise have sympathized with
Byron’s lonely joy in a Jura storm 2, or with Shelley’s
interest in floating paper boats down the Serchio.
§ 28. And then observe, farther, as I kept the
names of Wordsworth and Scott out of the second
list, I withdrew, also, certain names from the finest;
and for this reason, that in all the men who are
named in that list, there is evidently some degree
of love for nature, which may have been originally
of more power than we suppose, and may have had
an infinitely hallowing and protective influence upon
them. But there also lived certain men of high
1 I have mot read Clarissa.
3 It might be thought that Young could have sympathized
with it. He would have made better use of it, but he would
mot have had the same delight in it. He turns his solitude to
good account ; but this is because, to him, solitude is sorrow,
and his real enjoyment would have been of amiable society,
and a place at court.
CHAP, xvn] THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE 825
intellect in that age who had no love of nature what-
ever. They do not appear ever to have received the
smallest sensation of ocular delight from any natural
scene, but would have lived happily all their lives
in drawingrooms or studies. And, therefore, in
these men we shall be able to determine, with the
greatest chance of accuracy, what the real influence
of natural beauty is, and what the character of a
mind destitute of its love. Take, as conspicuous
instances, Le Sage and Smollett, and you will find,
in meditating over their works, that they are utterly
incapable of conceiving a human soul as endowed
with any nobleness whatever ; their heroes are simply
beasts endowed with some degree of human intellect ;
— cunning, false, passionate, reckless, ungrateful, and
abominable, incapable of noble joy, of noble sorrow,
of any spiritual perception or hope. I said, * beasts
with human intellect but neither Gil Bias nor
Roderick Random reach, morally, anything near the
level of dogs; while the delight which the writers
themselves feel in mere filth and pain, with an
unmitigated foulness and cruelty of heart, is just as
manifest in every sentence as the distress and indig-
nation with which pain and injustice are seen by
Shelley and Byron.
§ 29. Distinguished from these men by some evi-
dence of love for nature, yet an evidence much less
clear than that for any of those named even in the
first list, stand Cervantes, Pope, and Molifere. It
is not easy to say how much the character of these
last depended on their epoch and education; but
it is noticeable that the first two agree 4hus far in
temper with Le Sage and Smollett, — that they de-
light in dwelling upon vice, misfortune, or folly, as
subjects of amusement; while yet they are distin-
guished from Le Sage and Smollett by capacity of
conceiving nobleness of character, only in a humiliat-
ing and hopeless way ; the one representing all
chivalry as insanity, the other placing the wisdom
of man in a serene and sneering reconciliation of good
with evil. Of Molifere I think very di^ffetently.
. IHE MOBAL OF LANDSCAPE [paetiv
Living in the blindest period of the world’s history,
in the most luxurious city, and the most corrupted
court, of the time, he yet manifests through all his
writings an exquisite natural wisdom; a capacity for
the most simple enjoyment; a high sense of all noble-
ness, honour, and purity, variously marked through-
-out his slighter work, but distinctly made the theme
of his two perfect plays — the Tartuffe and Misan-
thrope; and in all that he says of art or science he
has an unerring instinct for what is useful and sin-
cere, and uses his whole power to defend it, with
as keen a hatred of everything affected and vain.
And, singular as it may seem, the first definite
lesson read to Europe, in that school of simpHcity
of which Wordsworth was the supposed originator
among the mountains of Cumberland, was, in fact,
given in the midst of the court of Louis XIV, and by
Moliere. The little canzonet, ‘ J’aime mieux ma
mie ’, is, I believe, the first Wordsworthian poem
brought forward on philosophical principles, to oppose
the schools of art and affectation.
§ 30. I do not know if, by a careful analysis, I
could point out any evidences of a capacity for the
love of natural scenery in Moliere stealing forth
through the slightness of his pastorals; but, if not,
we must simply sot him aside as exceptional, as a
man uniting Wordsworth’s philosophy with Le Sage’s
wit, turned by circumstances from the observance
of natural beauty to that of human frailty. And
thus putting him aside for the moment, I think
cannot doubt of our main conclusion, that, though
the absence of the love of nature is not an assured
condemnation, its presence is an invariable sign of
goodness of heart and justness of moral perception,
though by no means of moral practice; that in pro-
portion to the degree in which it is felt, will probably
be the degree in which all nobleness and beauty of
character will also be felt; that when it is originally
absent from any mind, that mind is in many other
respects hard, worldly, and degraded; that where,
having been originally present, it is repressed by art
CHAP. XVII] THE MOBAL OF LANDSCAPE mi
or education, that repression appears .to have been
detrimental to the person suffering it; and that
wherever the feeling exists, it acts for good on the
character to which it belongs, though, as it may often
belong to characters weak in other respects, it may
carelessly be mistaken for a source of evil in them.
§ 31. And having arrived at this conclusion by
a review of facts, which I hope it will be admitted,
whether accurate or not, has at least been candid,
these farther considerations may confirm our belief
in its truth. Observe : the whole force of educa-
tion, until very lately, has been directed in every
possible way to the destruction of the love of nature.
The only knowledge which has been considered essen-
tial among us is that of words, and, next after it,
of the abstract sciences; while every liking shown
by children for simple natural history has been either
violently checked, (if it took an inconvenient form
for the housemaids), or else scrupulously limited to
hours of play : so &at it has really been impossible
for any child earnestly to study the works of God
but against its conscience; and the love of nature
has become inherently the characteristic of truants
and idlers. While also the art of drawing, which
is of more real importance to the human race than
that of writing (because people can hardly draw
anything without being of some use both to them-
selves and others, and can hardly write anything
without wasting their own time and that of others),
— this art of drawing, I say, which on plain and stern
system should be taught to every child, just as
writing is — ^has been so neglected and tfbused, that
there is not tme man in a thousand, even of its
professed teachers, who knows its first principles :
and thus it needs much ill-fortune or obstinacy —
much neglect on the part of his teachers, or rebel-
lion on his own — before a boy can get le^ve to use
his eyes or his fingers; so that those who can use
them are for the most part neglected or rebellious
lads — ^runaways and bad scholars — passionate,
erratic, self-willed, and restive against all forms of
%28 THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE [partiv
education; while your well-behaved and amiable
scholars are disciplined into blindness and palsy of
half their faculties. Wherein there is at once a
notable ground for what difference we have observed
between the lovers of nature and its despisers; be-
tween the somewhat immoral and unrespectable
Watchfulness of the one, and the moral and respect-
able blindness of the other.
§ 82 . One more argument remains, and that, I
beheve, an imanswerable one. As, by the accident
of education, the love of nature has been, among
us, associated with wilfulness ^ so, by the accident
of time, it has been associated with faithlessness.
I traced, above, the peculiar mode in which this
faithlessness was indicated; but I never intended to
imply, therefore, that it was an invariable concomi-
tant of the love. Because it happens that, by
various concurrent operations of evil, we have been
led, according to those words of the Greek poet
already quoted, to ‘ dethrone the gods, and crown the
whirlwind ’, it is no reason that wo should forget
there was once a time when ‘ the Lord answered
Job out of the whirlwind And if we now take
final and full view of the matter, we shall find that
the love of nature, wherever it has existed, has been
a faithful and sacred element of human feeling ; that
is to say, supposing all circumstances otherwise the
same with respect to two individuals, the one who
loves nature most will be always found to have more
faith in Ood than the other. It is intensely diffi-
cult, owing to the confusing and counter influences
which always mingle in the data of the problem, to
make this abstraction fairly; but so far as we can
do it, so far, I boldly assert, the result is constantly
the same : the nature- worship will be found to bring
with it such a sense of the presence and power of a
Great Spirit as no mere reasoning can either induce
or controvert; and where that nature-worship is
innocently pursued — ^i.e. with due respect to other
claims on time, feeling, and exertion, and associated
with the higher principles of religion — it becomes
CHAP, xvn] THE MORAL OF LANDSCAFE m
the channel of certain sacred truths, which by no
other means can be conveyed,
§ 83. This is not a statement which any investiga-
tion is needed to prove. It comes to us at once
from the highest of all authority. The greater
number of the words which are recorded in Scrip-
ture, as directly spoken to men by the lips dl the
Deity, are either simple revelations of His ifW,, or
special threatenings, commands, and promisee ipelit-
ing to special events. But two passages of God’s
speaking, one in the Old and one in the New Testa-
ment, possess, it seems to me, a different character
from any of the rest, having been uttered, the one
to effect the last necessary change in the mind of a
man whose piety was in other respects perfect; and
the other, as the first statement to all men of the
principles of Christianity by Christ Himself — mean
the 38th to 41st chapters of the book of Job, and the
Sermon on the Mount. Now the first of these pas-
sages is, from beginning to end, nothing else than a
direction of the mind which was to be perfected to
humble observance of the works of God in nature.
And the other consists only in the inculcation of
three things: 1st, right conduct; 2nd, looking for
eternal life; 3rd, trusting God, through watchfulness
of His dealings with His creation : and the entire
contents of the book of Job, and of the Sermon on
the Mount, will be found resolvable simply into these
three requirements from all men — ^that they should
act rightly, hope for heaven, and watch God’s won-
ders and work in the earth; the right conduct being
always summed up under the three heads of justice ^
mercy, and truth, and no mention of any doctrinal
point whatsoever occurring in either piece of divine
teaching.
§ 34. As far as I can judge of the ways of men,
it seems to me that the simplest and most necessary
truths are always the last believed; and 1 suppose
that well-meaning people in general would rather
regulate their conduct and creed by almost any
other portion of Scripture whatsoever, than by that
the moral OF LANDSCAPE [partiv
Sermon on the Mount which contains the things that
Christ thought it first necessary for all men to under-
stand. Nevertheless, I believe the time will soon
come for the full force of these two passages of
Scripture to be accepted. Instead of supposing the
love of nature necessarily connected with the faith-
lessness of the age, I believe it is connected properly
with the benevolence and liberty of the age; that it
is precisely the most healthy element which dis-
tinctively belongs to us; and that out of it, culti-
vated no longer in levity or ignorance, but in earnest-
ness, and as a duty, results will spring of an
importance at present inconceivable ; and lights
arise, which, for the first time in man’s history, will
reveal to him the true nature of his life, the true
field for his energies, and the true relations between
him and his Maker.
§ 35. I will not endeavour here to trace the various
modes in which these results are likely to be effected,
for this would involve an essay on education, on
the uses of natural history, and the probable future
destiny of nations. Somewhat on these subjects I
have spoken in other places; and I hope to find time,
and proper place, to say more. But one or two
observations may be made merely to suggest the
directions in which the reader may follow out the
subject for himself.
The great mechanical impulses of the age, of which
most of us are so proud, are a mere passing fever,
half-speculative, half -childish. People will discover
at last that royal roads to anything can no more be
laid in iroik than they can in dust; that there are,
in fact, no royal roads to anywhere worth going to;
that if there were, it would that instant cease to be
worth going to — I mean, so far as the things to be
obtained are in any way estimable in terms of price.
For there are two classes of precious things in the
world : those that God rfves us for nothing — sun,
air, and life (both mortal life and immortal); and
the secondarily precious things which He gives us
for a price : these secondarily precious things.
CHAP, xvii] THE MOKAL OF LANDSCAPE Ml
worldly wine and milk, can only be bought for
definite money; they never can be cheapened. No
cheating nor bargaining will ever get a single thing
out of nature’s ‘ establishment ’ at half-price. Do
we want to be strong? — ^we must work. To be
hungry? — we must starve. To be happy? — ^we must
be kind. To be wise? — ^we must look and think.
No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour,
nor making of stuffs a thousand yards a minute, will
make us one whit stronger, happier, or wiser. There
was always more in the world than men could see,
walked they ever so slowly ; they will see it no better
for going fast. And they will at last, and soon too,
find out that their grand inventions for conquering
(as they think) space and time, do, in reality, con-
quer nothing; for space and time are, in their own
essence, unconquerable, and besides did not want
any sort of conquering; they wanted using, A fool
always wants to shorten space and time : a wise man
wants to lengthen both. A fool wants to kill space
and kill time : a wise man, first to gain them, then
to animate them. Your railroad, when you come
to understand it, is only a device for making the
world smaller : and as for being able to talk from
place to place, that is, indeed, well and convenient;
but suppose you have, originally, nothing to say i.
We shall be obliged at last to confess, what we
should long ago have known, that the really precious
things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a
bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly
a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not
at all in going, but in being. •
§ 36. ‘ Well; but railroads and telegraphs are so
useful for communicating knowledge to savage
nations.’ Yes, if you have any to give them. If
you know nothing hut railroads, and can communi-
cate nothing but aqueous vapour and gunpowder —
what then? But if you have any other thing than
1 The light-outspeeding telegraph
Bears nothing on its beam. Emerson.
See Appendix III.
1832^ THE MOBAL OF LANDSCAPE [partiv
those to give, then the railroad is of use only because
it communicates that other thing ; and the question is
— ^what that other thing may be. Is it religion? I
believe if we had really wanted to communicate that^
we could have done it in less than 1800 years, with-
out steam. Most of the good religious communica-
^tion that I remember, has been done on foot; and
it cannot be easily done faster than at foot pace.
Is it science? But what science — of motion, meat,
and medicine? Well; when you have moved your
savage, and dressed your savage, fed him with white
bread, and shown him how to set a limb — what
next? Follow out that question. Suppose every
obstacle overcome; give your savage every advan-
tage of civilization to the full; suppose that you
have put the Red Indian in tight shoes; taught the
Chinese how to make Wedgwood’s ware, and to
paint it with colours that will rub off; and per-
suaded all Hindoo women that it is more pious to
torment their husbands into graves than to burn
themselves at the burial — what next? Gradually,
thinking on from point to point, we shall come to
perceive that all true happiness and nobleness are
near us, and yet neglected by us; and that till we
have learned how to be happy and noble we have
not much to tell, even to Red Indians. The delights
of horse-racing and hunting, of assemblies in the
night instead of the day, of costly and wearisome
music, of costly and burdensome dress, of chagrined
contention for place or power, or wealth, or the eyes
of the multitude; and all the endless occupation
without purpose, and idleness without rest, of our
vulgar world, are not, it seems to me, enjoyments
we need be ambitious to commxmicate And all real
and wholesome enjoyments possible to man have
been just as possible to him, since first he was made
of the earth, as they are now; and they are possible
to him chiefly in peace. To watch the corn grow,
and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over
ploughshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to
nope, to pray-rthese are the things that make men
CHAP. XVII] THE MOBAIi OF LANDSCAPE 888
happy; they have always had the power of doing
these, they never will have power to do more. The
world’s prosperity or adversity depends upon our
knowing and teaching these few things : but upon
iron, or glass, or electricity, or steam, in no wise.
§ 87. And I am Utopian and enthusiastic enough
to believe, that the time will come when the world
will discover this. It has now made it-^i experiments
in every possible direction but the right one; and
it seems that it must, at last, try the, right one, in
a mathematical necessity. It has tried fighting, and
preaching, and fasting, buying and selling, pomp
and parsimony, pride and humiliation — every pos-
sible manner of existence in which it could con-
jecture there was any happiness or dignity; and all
the while, as it bought, sold, and fought, and fasted,
and wearied itself with policies, and ambitions, and
self-denials, God had placed its real happiness in the
keeping of the little mosses of the wayside, and of
the clouds of the firmament. Now and then a
wearied king, or a tormented slave, found out where
the true kingdoms of the world were, and possessed
himself, in a furrow or two of garden ground, of a
truly infinite dominion. But the world would not
believe their report, and went on trampling down the
mosses, and forgetting the clouds, and seeking hap-
piness in its own way, until, at last, blundering and
late, came natural science; and in natural science
not only the observation of things, but the finding
out of new uses for them. Of course the world,
having a choice left to it, went wrong as usual, and
thought that these mere material uses* were to be
the sources of its happiness. It got the clouds
packed into iron cylinders, and made them carry its
wise self at their own cloud pace. It got weavable
fibres out of the mosses, and made clothes for itself,
cheap and fine — ^here was happiness at last. To go
as fast as the clouds, and manufacture everything
out of anything — ^here was paradise, indeed I
§ 38. And now, when, in a little while, it is un-
paradised again, if there were any other mistake
fa4 THE MOEAL OF LANDSCAPE [partiv
r t the world could make, it would of course make
But I see not that there is any other; and,
standing fairly at its wits’ end, having found that
going fast, when it is used to it, is no more paradis-
iacal than going slow; and that all the prints and
cottons in Manchester cannot make it comfortable
in its mind, I do verily believe it will come, finally,
to understand that God paints the clouds and shapes
the moss-fibres, that men may be happy in seeing
Him at His work, and that in resting quietly beside
Him, and watching His working, and — according to
the power He has communicated to ourselves, and
the guidance He grants — in carrying out His pur-
poses of peace and charity among all His creatures,
are the only real happinesses that ever were, or will
be, possible to mankind.
§ 39. How far art is capable of helping us in such
happiness we hardly yet know; but I hope to be able,
in the subsequent parts of this work, to give some
data for arriving at a conclusion in the matter.
Enough has been advanced to relieve the reader from
any lurking suspicion of unworthiness in our sub-
ject, and to induce him to take interest in the mind
and work of the great painter who has headed the
landscape school among us. What farther consider-
ations may, within any reasonable limits, be put
before him, respecting the effect of natural scenery
on the human heart, I will introduce in their proper
places either as we examine, under Turner’s guid-
ance, the different classes of scenery, or at the close
of the whole work; and therefore I have only one
point more t<^ notice here, namely ^ the exact relation
between landscape-painting and natural science,
properly so called.
§ 40. For it may be thought that I have rashly
assumed that the Scriptural authorities above quoted
apply to that partly superficial view of nature which
is taken by the landscape-painter, instead of to the
accurate view taken by the man of science. So far
from there being rashness in such an assumption,
the whole language, both of the book of Job and
CHAP. XVII] THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE 88*
the Sermon on the Mount, gives precisely the view
of nature which is taken by the uninvestigating
affection of a humble, but powerful mind. There is-
no dissection of muscles or counting of elements,,
but the boldest and broadest glance at the apparent
facts, and the most magnificent metaphor in express-
ing them. ‘ His eyes are like the eyelids of the
morning. In his neck remaineth strength, and sor-
row is turned into joy before him.’ And in the
often repeated, never obeyed, command, ‘ Consider
the lilies of the field observe there is precisely the
delicate attribution of life which we have seen to be
the characteristic of the modern view of landscape,
— ‘ They toil not There is no science, or hint of
science; no counting of petals, nor display of pro-
visions for sustenance : nothing but the expression
of sympathy, at once the most childish, and the most-
profound, — ‘ They toil not.’
§ 41. And we see in this, therefore, that the in-
stinct which leads us thus to attribute life to the*
lowest forms of organic nature, does not necessarily
spring from faithlessness, nor the deducing a moral
Out of them from an irregular and languid con-
scientiousness. In this, as in almost all things
connected with moral discipline, the same results
may follow from contrai^y causes; and as there are
a good and evil contentment, a good and evil dis-
content, a good and evil care, fear, ambition, and
so on, there are also good and evil forms of this
sympathy with nature, and disposition to moralize
over itb In general, active men, of strong sense and
stern principle, do not care to see anj^hing in a
leaf, but vegetable tissue, and are so well convinced
of useful moral truth, that it does not strike them
1 Compare what is said before in various places of good and
bad finish, good and bad mystery, &;c. If a man were disposed
to system-making, he could easily throw together a counter-
system to Aristotle’s, showing that in all things there were
two extremes which exactly resembled each other, but of
which one was bad, the other good ; and a mean, resembling
neither, but better than the one, and worse than the other.
THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE [paetiv
as a new or notable thing when they find it in any
way symbolized by material nature; hence there is
a strong presumption, when first we perceive a
tendency in any one to regard trees as living, and
enunciate moral aphorisms over every pebble they
stumble against, that such tendency proceeds from
a morbid temperament, likd Shelley’s, or an incon-
sistent one, like Jaques’s. But when the active life
is nobly fulfilled, and iiie mind is then raised be-
yond it into clear and calm beholding of the world
around us, the same tendency again manifests itself
in the most sacred way : the simplest forms of
nature are strangely animated by the sense of the
Divine presence; the trees and flowers seem all, in
a sort, children of God; and we ourselves, their
fellows, made out of the same dust, and greater
than they only in having a greater portion of the
Divine power exerted on our frame, and all the
common uses and palpably visible forms of things,
beconie subordinate in our minds to their inner glory,
— to the mysterious voices in which they talk to
us about God, and the changeful and typical aspects
by which they witness to us of holy truth, and fill
us with obedient, joyful, and thankful emotion,
§ 42. It is in raising us from the first state of
inactive reverie to the second of useful thought, that
scientific pursuits are to be chiefly praised. But in
restraining us at this second stage, and checking tl^b
impulses towards higher contemplation, they are io
be feared or blamed. They may in certain minds be
consistent with such contemplation; but only by
an effort : ^'n their nature they are always adverse to
it, having a tendency to chill and subdue the feel-
ings, and to resolve all things into atoms and
numbers. For most men, an ignorant enjoyment
is better than an informed one; it is better to con-
ceive the sky as a blue dome than a dark cavity,
and the cloud as a golden throne than a sleety mist,
I much question whether any one who knows optics,
however religious he may be, can feel in equal degree
the pleasure or reverence which an unlettered
€HAP. xyiii] THE TEACHEES OF ^7
peasant may leel at the sight of a rainbow. And it
is mercifully thus ordained, since the law of life,
for a finite being, with respect to the works of an
infinite one, must be always an infinite ignorance.
We cannot fathom the mystery of a single flower,
nor is it intended that we should; but that the
pursuit of science should constantly be stayed by
the love of beauty, and accuracy of knowledge by
tenderness of emotion.
§ 43. Nor is it even just to speak of the love of
beauty as in all respects unscientific; for there is a
science of the aspects of things, as well as of their
nature; and it is as much a fact to be noted in
their constitution, that they produce such and such
an effect upon the eye or heart (as, for instance,
that minor scales of sound cause melancholy), as
that they are made up of certain atoms or vibrations
of matter.
It is as the master of this science of Aspects^ that
I said, some time ago, Turner must eventually be
named always with Bacon, the master of the science
of Essence, As the first poe^i who has, in all their
range, understood the grounds of noble emotion
which exist in landscape, his future influence will
be of a still more subtle and important character.
The rest of this work will therefore be dedicated
to the explanation of the principles on which he
composed, and of the aspects of nature which he
was the first to discern.
CHAPTER XVIII
OF THE TEACHERS OF TURNER
§ 1. The first step to the understanding either
the mind or position of a great man ought, 1 think,
to be an inquiry into the elements of his early in-
struction, and the mode in which he was affected
by the circumstances of surrounding life. In making
this inquiry, with respect to Turner, we shall be
M. P., 111 . z
TWSi fBACHBES OF TUENER [part xv
necessarily led to take note of the causes wliich had
brought landscape-painting into the state in which
he found it; and, thereford, of those transitions of
style ifi^liioh, it will be remembered, we overleaped
(hoping for ^ future opportunity of examining them)
at the close of the fiEeenth chapter.
§ 2. And first, I said, it will be remembered, some
way back, that the relations between Scott, and
Turner would probably be found to differ very curi-
ously from those between Dante and Giotto. They
diiler jprimarily in this — ^that Dante and Giotto,
Mvixig in a consistent age, were subjected to one and
the same influence, and may be reasoned about
almost in similar terms. But Scott and Turner,
living inconsister^t age, became subjected to
inconsistoiit influences ; and are at once distinguished
by notable contrarieties, requiring separate exam-
ination in each.
§ 3, Of these, the chief was, that Scott, having
had the blessing of a totally neglected education,
was able early to follow most of his noble instincts;
but Turner, having suffered under the instruction of
the Royal Academy, had to pass nearly thirty years
of his life in recovering from its consequences i ; this
permanent result following for both — ^that Scott
never was led into any fault foreign to his nature,
but spoke what was in him, in rugged or idle
simplicity; erring only where it was natural to err,
and failing only where it was impossible to succeed.
But Turner, from the beginning, was led into con-
strained and unnatural error; diligently -debarred
from every ordinary help to success. The one thing
which the '^Academy ought to have taught him
(namely, the simple and safe use of oil colour), it
never taught him ; but it carefully repressed his per-
ceptions of truth, his capacities of invention, and
1 The education here spoken of is, of course, that bearing
on the main work of life. In other respects. Turner’s
education was more neglected than Scott’s, and that not
beneficently. See the close of the. third of my Edinburgh
Lectures,
CHAP, xvni] THE TEACHEBS OF TTJRHEB 3»
his tendencies of choice. For him it was impossible
to do right but in a spirit of defiance; and the first
condition of his progress in learning, was the power
to forget.
§ 4. One most important distinction' in their feel-
ings throughout life was necessitated by this difier-
ence in early training. Scott gathered what little
knowledge of architecture he possessed, in wander*
ings among the rocky walls of QrichtoUn, Loch*
leven, and Linlithgow, and among the delipate
pillars of Holyrood, Bowlin, and Melrose. Tufner
acquired his knowledge of architecture at the desk,
from academical elevations of the Parthenon apd St
Paul *8 ; and spent a large portion of his early years
in taking views of gentlemen’s seats, temple^ of the
Muses, and other productions of modern taste and
imagination; being at the same time directed ex-
clusively to classical sources for all information as
to the proper subjects of art. Hence, while Scott
was at once directed to the history of his native
land, and to the Gothic fields of imagination; and
his mind was fed in a consistent, natural, and felici-
tous way from his youth up, poor Turner for a
long time knew no inspiration but that of Twicken-
ham; no sublimity but that of Virginia Water. All
the history and poetry presented to him at the age
when the mind receives its dearest associations, were
those of the gods and nations of long ago; and his
models of sentiment and style were the worst and
last wrecks of the Renaissance affectations.
§ 5. Therefore (though utterly free from affecta-
tion), his early works are full of an enforced artificial-
ness, and of things ill-done and ill-conceived, be-
cause foreign to his own instincts; and, throughout
life, whatever he did, because he thought he ought
to do it, was wrong; all that he planned on any
principle, or in supposed obedience to canons of
taste, was false and abortive : he only did right when
he ceased to reflect; was powerful only when he
made no effort, and successful only when he had
taken no aim.
340 THE TEACHERS OF TURNER [part iv
§ 6. And it is one of the most interesting things
connected with the study of his art, to watch the
way in which his own strength of English instinct
breaks gradually through fetter and formalism; how
from Egerian wells he steals away to Yorkshire
streamlets; how from Homeric rocks, with laurels
at the top and caves in the bottom, he climbs, at
last, to Alpine precipices fringed with pine, and forti-
fied with the slopes of their own ruins; and how
from Temples of Jupiter and Gardens of the Hes-
perides, a spirit in his feet guides him, at last, to the
lonely arches of Whitby, and bleak sands of Holy Isle.
§ 7. As, however, is the case with almost all
inevitable evil, in its effect on great minds, a certain
good rose even out of this warped education; namely,
his power of more completely expressing all the
tendencies of his epoch, and sympathizing with many
feelings and many scenes which must otherwise have
been entirely profitless to him. Scott’s mind was
just as large and full of sympathy as Turner’s; but,
having been permitted always to take his own choice
among sources of enjoyment, Scott was entirely in-
capable of entering into the spirit of any classical
scene. He was strictly a Goth and a Scot, and his
sphere of sensation may be almost exactly limited
by the growth of heather. But Turner had been
forced to pay early attention to whatever of good
and right there was even in things naturally distaste-
ful to him. The charm of early association had been
cast around much that to other men would have
been tame : while making drawings of flower-gardens
and Palladia, n mansions, he had been taught sym-
pathy with whatever grace or refinement the garden
or mansion could display, and to the close of life
could enjoy the delicacy of trellis and parterre, as
well as the wildness of the wood and the moorland;
and watch the staying of the silver fountain at its
appointed height in the sky, with an interest as
earnest, if not as intense, as that with which he
followed the crash of the Alpine cataract into its
clouds of wayward raga
CBAP. xxrin] THE TEACHERS OE TURNER 341
§ 8. The distinct losses to be weighed against this
gain are, first, the waste of time during youth in
painting subjects of no interest whatsoever, — sparks,
villas, and ugly architectu’-e in general : secondly,
the devotion of his utmost strength in later years
to meaningless classical compositions, such as the
Pali and Rise of Carthage, Bay of Baiae, Daphne and
Leucippus, and such others, which, with infinite
accumulation of material, are yet utterly heartless
and emotionless, dead to the very root of thought,
and incapable of producing wholesome or useful
effect on any human mind, except only as exhibi-
tions of technical skill and graceful arrangement :
and, lastly, his incapacity, to the close of life, of
entering heartily into the spirit of any elevated archi-
tecture; for those Palladian and classical buildings
which he had been taught that it was right to
admire, being wholly devoid of interest, and in their
own formality and barrenness quite unmanageable,
he was obliged to make them manageable in his pic-
tures by disguising them, and to use all kinds of
playing shadows and glittering lights to obscure their
ugly details; and as in their best state such build-
ings are white and colourless, he associated the idea
of whiteness with perfect architecture generally, and
was confused and puzzled when he found it grey.
Hence he never got thoroughly into the feeling of
Gothic ; its darkness and complexity embarrassed
him; he was very apt to whiten by way of idealiz-
ing it, and to cast aside its details in order to get
breadth of delicate light. In Venice, and the towns
of Italy generally, he fastened on the wrong build-
ings, and used those which he chose merely as kind
of white clouds, to set off his brilliant groups of
boats, or burning spaces of lagoon. In various other
minor ways, which we shall trace in their proper
place, his classical education hindered or hurt him;
but I feel it very difficult to say how far the loss was
balanced by the general grasp it gave his mind; nor
am I able to conceive what would have been the
result, if his aims had been made at once narrower
342 THE TEACHERS OF TURNER [part iv
and more natural, and he had been led in his youth
to delight in Gothic legends instead of classical
mythology; and, instead of the porticoes of the Par-
thenon, had studied in the aisles of Notre Dame.
§ 9. It is still more difficult to conjecture whether
he gathered most good or evil from the pictorial art
which surrounded him in his youth. What that art
was, and how the European schools had arrived at
it, it now becomes necessary briefly to inquire.
It will be remembered that, in the 14th chapter,
we left our mediaeval landscape (§ 18) in a state of
severe formality, and perfect subordination to the
interest of figure-subject. I will now rapidly trace the
mode and progress of its emancipation.
§ 10. The formalized conception of scenery re-
mained little altered until the time of Raphael, being
only better executed as the knowledge of art
advanced; that is to say, though the trees were still
stiff, and often set one on each side of the principal
figures, their colour and relief on the sky were
exquisitely imitated, and all groups of near leaves
and flowers drawn with the most tender care, and
studious botanical accuracy. The better the sub-
jects were painted, however, the more logically
absurd they became : a background wrou^t in
Chinese confusion of towers and rivers, was in early
times passed over carelessly, and forgiven for the
sake of its pleasant colour; but it appealed some-
what too far to imaginative indulgence when Ghir-
landajo drew an exquisite perspective view of Venice
and her lagoons behind an Adoration of the Magi i ;
and the impossibly small boats which might be par-
doned in a mere illuniination, representing the
miraculous draught of fishes, became, whatever may
be said to the contrary, inexcusably absurd in
Raphael’s fully realized landscape; so as at once to
destroy the credibility of every circumstance of the
event.
§ 11. A certain charm, however, attached itself to
many forms of this landscape, owing to their very
1 The picture is iu the TJffizi of Florence.
CHAP, ifviii] THE TEACHERS OF TURNER 343
unnaturalness, as I have endeavoured to explain
already in the last chapter of the second volume,
§§ 9 to 12; noting, however, there, that it was in
no wise to be made a subject of imitation; a con-
clusion which I have since seen more and more
ground for holding finally. The longer I think over
the subject, the more I perceive that the pleasure
we take in such unnatural landscapes is intimately
connected with our habit of regarding the New Testa-
ment as a beautiful poem, instead of a statement
of plain facts. He who believes thoroughly that the
events are true will expect, and ought to expect, real
olive copse behind real Madonna, and no sentimental
absurdities in either.
§ 12. Nor am I at all sure how far the delight
which we take (when I say we^ I mean, in general,
lovers of old sacred art) in such quaint landscape,
arises from its peculiar falsehood, and how far from
its peculiar truth. For as it falls into certain errors
more boldly, so, also, what truth it states, it states
more firmly, than subsequent work. No engravings,
that I know, render the backgrounds of sacred pic-
tures with sufficient care to enable the reader to
judge of this matter unless before the works them-
selves. I have, therefore, engraved, on the opposite
page, a bit of the background of Raphael’s Holy
Family, in the Tribune of the Uffizi, at Florence. I
copied the trees leaf for leaf, and the rest of the work
with the best care I could; the engraver, Mr. Army-
tage, has admirably rendered the delicate atmosphere
which partly veils the distance. Now I do not know
how far it is necessary to such pleasure ^s we receive
from this landscape, that the trees should be both
so straight and formal in stem, and should have
branches no thicker than threads; or that the out-
lines of the distant hills should approximate so closely
to those on any ordinary Wedgwood’s china pattern.
I know that, on the contrary, a great part of the
pleasure arises from the sweet expression of air and
sunshine; from the traceable resemblance of the
city and tower to Florence and F4sole ; from the fact
^ TB:E teachers of turner [tAMav
ihat, though the boughs are too thin, the lines of
rami&oation are true and beautiful; and from the
expression of continually varied form in the clusters
of leafage. And although all lovers of sacred art
would shrink in horror from the idea of substituting
for such a landscape a bit of Cuyp or Rubens, I do
^not think that the horror they feel is because Cuyp
and Rubens’s landscape is tTuer^ but because it ia
coarseT and more vulgar in associated idea than
Raphael’s; and 1 think it possible that the true forms
of hills, and true thicknesses of boughs, might be
tenderly stolen into this background of Raphael’s
without giving oSence to any one.
§ 13. Take a Acme what more definite instance.
The rook in Rg. 5 [Plate B], at the side, is one put
by Ghirlandajo into the background of his Baptism of
Christ. I have no doubt Ghirlandajo ’s own rocks
and trees are better, in several respects, than those
here represented, since I have copied them from one
of Lasmio’s execrable engravings; still, the harsh
outline and generally stiff and uninventful blankness
of the design are true enough, and characteristic of
all rock-painting of the period. In the plate opposite
I have etched i the outline of a fragment of one of
Turner’s cliffs, out of his drawing of Bolton Abbey;
and it does not seem to me that, supposing them
properly introduced in the composition, the sub-
stitution of the soft natural lines for the hard un-
natural ones would make Ghirlandajo ’s background
one whit less sacred.
§ 14. But, be this as it may, the fact is, as ill
luck would have it, that profanity of feeling, and
skill in art, increased together; so that we do not
find the backgrounds rightly painted till the figures
become irreligious and feelingless; and hence we
associate necessarily the perfect landscape with want
of feeling. The first great innovator was either
1 This etching is prepared for receiving mezzotint in the
next volume ; it is therefore much heavier in line, especially in
the water, than I should have made it, if intended to be coin-
plete as it is, in the 1st edition.]
OF TUap 84^
Masaccio or Filippino Lippi : iheir works con
fused togethei^'jKi €tie CJiapel of the Carnune, that^-"
know not to whom I may attribute — or whether,
without being immediately quarrelled with, and con-
ij^dieted, I may attribute to anybodj^ — the 4and-
soape background of the fresco of the Tribute Money.
But that background, with on# or two other frag-
ments in the same chapel, is far in advance ot euI
other work I have seen of the period, in expression
of the rounded contours and large slopes of hills,
and the association of their summits with the clouds.
The opposite engraving will give some better idea of
its character than can be gained from the outlines
commonly published; though the dark spaces, which
in the original are deep blue, come necessarily some-
what too harshly on the eye when translated into
light and shade. I shall have occasion to speak with
greater speciality of this background in examining
the forms of hills ; meantime, it is only as an isolated
work that it can be named in the history of pictorial
progress, for Masaccio died too young to carry out
his purposes ; and the men around him were too
ignorant of landscape to understand or take advan-
tage of the little he had done. Raphael, though he
borrowed from him in the human figure, never seems
to have been influenced by his landscape, and retains
either, as in Plate XI, the upright formalities of
Perugino; or, by way of being natural, expands his
distances into flattish flakes of hill, nearly formless,
as in the backgrounds of the Charge to Peter and
Draught of Fishes; and thenceforward the Tuscan
and Roman schools grew more and mo»e artificial,
and lost themselves finally under round-headed
niches and Corinthian porticoes.
§ 1$. It needed, therefore, the air of the northern
mountains and of the sea to brace the hearts of men
to iho developement of the true landscape schools. I
sketched by chance one evening the line of the
Apennines from the ramparts of Parma, and I have
put the rough note of it, and the sky that was over
it, in Plate XIV, and next to this (Plate XV) a
346 THE TEACHERS OF TURNER [part iv
moment of sunset, behind the Euganean hills at
Venice. I shall have occasion to refer to both here-
after; but they have some interest here as types of
the kind of scenes which were daily set before the
eyes of Correggio and Titian, and of the sweet free
spaces of sky through which rose and fell, to them,
the coloured rays of the morning and evening.
§ 16. And they are connected, also, with the forms
of landscape adopted by the Lombardic masters, in
a very curious way. We noticed that the Flemings,
educated entirely in flat land, seemed to be always
contented with the scenery it supplied ; and we
.should naturally have expected that Titian and Correg-
gio living in the midst of the levels of the lagoons,
and of the plain of Lombardy, would also have ex-
pressed, in their backgrounds, some pleasure in such
level sp^ery, associated, of course, with the sub-
limity 'd£ the far-away Apennine, Euganean, or Alp.
But not a whit. The plains of mulberry and maize,
of sea and shoal, by which they were surrounded,
never occur in their backgrounds but in cases of
necessity; and both of them, in all their important
landscapes, bury themselves in wild wood; Correggio
delighting to relieve with green darkness of oak and
ivy the golden hair and snowy flesh of his figures;
and Titian, whenever the choice of a scene was in
his power, retiring to the narrow glens and forests
of Cadore.
§ 17. Of the vegetation introduced by both, I shall
have to speak at length in the course of the chapters
on Foliage; meantime, I give in Plat#, XVI one of
Titian’s slightest bits of background, from one of the
frescoes in the little chapel behind St Antonio, at
Padua, which may be compared more conveniently
than any of his more elaborate landscapes with the
purist work from Raphael. For m both these ex-
amples the trees are equally slender and delicate,
only the formality of mediaeval art is, by Titian,
entirely abandoned, and the old conception of the
aspen grove and meadow done away with for ever.
We are now far from cities : the painter takes true
\lll ■
CHAP, xviii] THE TEACHERS OF TURNER 347
delight in the desert; the trees grow wild and free;
the sky also has lost its peace, and is writhed into
folds of motion, closely impendent upon earth, and
somewhat threatening, through its solemn light.
§ 18. Although, however, this example is character-
istic of Titian in its wildness, it is not so in its loose-
nr 88. It is only in the distant backgrounds of his
slightest work, or when he is in a hurry, that Titian
is vague : in all his near and studied work he com-
pletes every detail with scrupulous care. The nexi^j
Plate, XVII, a background of Tintoret’s, from h^^
picture of the Entombment at Parma, is more enj
tirely characteristic of the Venetians. Some mis^
takes made in the reduction of my drawing during
the course of engraving have cramped the curves
of the boughs and leaves, of which I will give the
t^yue outline farther on; meantime the subject, which
is that described in § 16. of the chapter on Penetra-
tive Imagination, Vol. II, will just as well answer the
purpose of exemplifying the Venetian love of gloom
and wildness, united with perfect definition of detail.
Every leaf and separate blade of grass is drawn;
but observe how tlie blades of grass are broken, hd\v
completely the aim at expression of faultlessness and
felicity has been withdrawn, as contrary to the laws
of the existent world.
§ 19. From this great Venetian school of landscape
Turner received much important teaching — almost
the only healthy teaching which he owed to pre-
ceding art. The designs of the Liber Studiorum are
founded first on nature, but in many cases modified
by forced imitation of Claude, and /ontf imitation oi
Titian. AH the worst and feeblest studies in the
book — as the pastoral with the nymph playing the
tambourine, that with the long bridge seen through
trees, and with the flock of goats on the walled road
— owe the principal part of their imbecilities tc
Claude; another group (Solway Moss, Peat Bog,
Lauffenbourg, &c.) is taken witR hardly any modifi-
cation by pictorial influence, straight from nature;
and the finest works in the book — the Grande Char-
348 THB*TEACHERS OF TURNER [paet iv
treuse, Rizpah, Jason, Cephalus, and one or two
more — are strongly under the influence of Titian.
§ 20. The Venetian school of landscape expired
with Tintoret, in the year 1594; and the sixteenth
century closed, like a grave, over the great art of
the world. There is no entirely sincere or great art
in the seventeenth century. Rubens and Rembrandt
are its two greatest men, both deeply stained by the
errors and affectations of their age. The influence
of the Venetians hardly extended to them; the
tower of the Titianesque art fell southwards; and
pn the dust of its ruins grew various art- weeds, such
Its Domenichino and the Carraccis. Their landscape,
which may in few words be accurately defined as
‘ Soum of Titian *, possesses no single merit, nor any
ground for the forgiveness of demerit; they are to
be named only as a link through which the Venetian
influence came dimly down to Claude and Salvator;
§ 21, Salvator possessed real genius, but was
crushed by misery in his youth, and by fashionable
society in his age. He had vigorous animal life, and
considerable invention, but no depth either of thought
or‘ perception. He took some hints directly from
nature, and expressed some conditions of the gro-
tesque of terror with original power ; but his baseness
of thought, and bluntness of sight, were unconquer-
able; and his works possess no value whatsoever
for any person versed in the walks of noble art.
They had little, if any, influence on Turner; if any,
it was in blinding him for some time to the grace
of tree trunks, and making him tear them too much
into splinters.
§ 22. Not so Claude, who may be considered as
Turner’s principal master. Claude’s capacities were
of the most limited kind; but he had tenderness of
perception, and sincerity of purpose, and he effected
a revolution in art. This revolution consisted mainly
in setting the sun in heaven i. Till Claude’s time
1 Compare Vol. I, Part II, Sec. I, Chap. VII. I repeat
here some things that were then said ; but it is necessary now
to review them in connection with Turner’s education, as well
as for the sake of enforcing them by illustration.
Ifac,
CHAP, xvm] THE TEACHERS OF TURNER 349
no one had seriously thought of painting the sun but
conventionally; that is to say, as a red or yellow
star, (often) with a face in it, under which type it
was constantly represented in illumination; else it
was kept out of the picture, or introduced in frag-
mentary distances, breaking through clouds with
almost definite rays. Perhaps the honour of having
first tried to represent the real effect of the sun in
landscape belongs to Bonifazio, in his pictures of
the camps of Israel i. Rubens followed in a kind of
bravado, sometimes making the rays issue from any-
thing but the orb of the sun; — here, for instance,
fig. 6 [Plate B] , is an outline of the position of the sun
(at s) with respect to his own rays, in a sunset behind
a tournament in the Louvre : and various interesting
effects of sunlight issuing from the conventional face-
filled orb occur in contemporary missal-painting;
fo? instance, very richly in the Harleian MS Brit.
Mus. 3469. But all this was merely indicative of
the tendency to transition which may always be
traced in any age before the man comes who is to
accomplish the transition. Claude took up the new
idea seriously, made the sun his subject, and painted
the effects of misty shadows cast by his rays over
the landscape, and other delicate aerial transitions,
as no one had ever done before, and, in some re-
spects, as no one has done in oil colour since.
§ 28. ‘ But,, how, if this were so, could his capa-
cities be of the meanest order?’ Because doing one
thing well, or better than others have done it, does
not necessarily imply large capacity. Capacity means
breadth of glance, understanding of the •relations of
things, and invention, and these are rare and pre-
cious; but there are very few men tvho have not
done something, in the course of their lives, better
than other people. I could point out many en-
gravers, draughtsmen, and artists, who have each a
particular merit in their manner, or particular field
of perception, that nobody else has, or ever had. But
this does not make them great men, it only indicates
a small special capacity of some kind : and all the
1 Now in the old library of Venice.
380 .''i'THE TEACHERS OF TURNER [part iv
smatkr if tbe gift be very peculiar and single ; for
a great man never so limits himself to one thing, as
that we shall be able to say, ‘ That is all he can do
If Claude had been a great man he would not have
been so steadfastly set on painting effects of sun;
he would have looked at all nature, and at all art,
and would have painted sun effects somewhat worse,
and nature universally much better.
§ 24. Such as he was, however, his discovery of
the way to make pictures look warm was very de-
lightful to the shallow connoisseurs of the age. Not
that they cared for sunshine; but they liked seeing
jugglery. They could not feel Titian’s noble colour,
nor Veronese’s noble composition; but they thought
it highly amusing to see the sun brought into a
picture : and Claude’s works were bought and de-
lighted in by vulgar people then, for their real-looking
suns, as pictures are now by vulgar people for having
real timepieces in their church towers.
§ 25. But when Turner arose, with an earnest de-
sire to paint the whole of nature, he found that the
existence of the sun was an important fact, and by
no means an easily manageable one. He loved sun-
shine for its own sake; but he could not at first
paint it. Most things else, he would more or less
manage without much technical difficulty; but the
burning orb and the golden haze could not, somehow,
be got out of the oil paint. Naturally he went , to
Claude, who really had got them out of oil paint;
approached him with great reverence, as having done
that which seemed to Turner most difficult of all
technical matters, and he became his faithful dis-
ciple. How much ho learned from him of manipula-
tion, I cannot tell; but one thing is certain, that
he never quite equalled him in that particular forte
of his. I imagine that Claude’s way of laying on oil
colour was so methodical that it could not possibly
be imitated by a man whose mechanism was inter-
fered with by hundreds of thoughts and aims totally
different from Claude’s; and, besides, I suppose that
certain useful principles in the management of paint.
XV
CHA.P. xvm] TBB teachers OF JUBNEB 351
of which our schools are now whoHy ignorant, had
come down as far as Claude, from the Venetians.
Turner at last gave up the attempt, and adopted a
manipulation of his own, which indeed effected
certain objects attainable in no other way, but which
still was in many respects unsatisfactory, dangerous,
and deeply to be regretted.
§ 26. But meantime his mind had been strongly
warped by Claude’s futilities of conception. It was
impossible to dwell on such works for any length of
time without being grievously harmed by them; and
the style of Turner’s compositions was for ever after-
wards weakened or corrupted. For, truly, it is
almost beyond belief into what depth of absurdity
Claude plunges continually in his most admired de-
signs. For instance; undertaking to paint Moses at
the Burning Bush, he represents a graceful landscape
with a city, a river, and a bridge, and plenty of tall
trees, and the sea, and numbers of people going
about their business and pleasure in every direction;
and the bush burning quietly upon a bank in the
corner; rather in the dark, and not to be seen with-
out close inspection. It would take some pages of
close writing to point out, one by one, the inanities
of heart, soul, and brain which such a conception
involves; the ineffable ignorance of the nature of
the event, and of the scene of it; the incapacity of
conceiving anything, even in ignorance, which should
be impressive; the dim, stupid, serene, leguminous
enjoyment of his sunny afternoon — burn the bushes
as much as they liked — these I leave the reader to
think over at his leisure, either before ^le picture
in Lord Ellesmere’s gallery, or the sketch of it in
the Liber Veritatis, But all these kinds of fallacy
sprung more or less out of the vices of the time in
which Claude lived; his own peculiar character
reaches beyond these, to an incapacity of understand-
ing the main point in anything he had to represent,
down to the minutest detail, which is quite un-
equalled, as far as I know, in human nugatoriness.
For instance; here, in Fig. 7, is the head, with half
362 THE TEACHERS OF TURNER [part iv
the body, of Eneas drawing his Bow, from No. 180
of the Liber Veritatis. Observe, the string is too
long by half; for if the bow were unbent, it would
be two feet longer than the whole bow. Then the
ft|*row is too long by half, has too heavy a head by
half; and finally, it actually is under the bow -hand,
instead of above it. Of the ideal and heroic refine-
ment of the head and drapery I will say nothing;
but look only at the wretched archery, and consider
if it would be possible for any child to draw the thing
with less understanding, or to make more mistakes
in the given compass
§ 27. And yet, exquisite as is Claude’s instinct for
blunder, he has not strength of mind enough to
blunder in a wholly original manner, but must needs
falter out of his way to pick up other people’s
puerilities and be absurd at second-hand. I have
been obliged to laugh a little — though I hope re.er-
ently — at Ghirlandajo’s landscapes, which yet we
saw had a certain charm of quaintness in them when
contrasted with his grand figures; but could any one
have believed that Claude, with all the noble land-
scapes of Titian set before him, and all nature round
about him, should yet go back to Ghirlandajo for
types of form. Yet such is the case. I said that
the Venetian influence came dimly down to Claude :
but the old Florentine influence came clearly. The
Claudesque landscape is not, as so commonly sup-
3 My old friend Blackwood complains bitterly, in his last
number, of my having given this illustration at one of ray late
lectures, saying, that I ‘ have a disagreeable knack of finding
out the joints in my opponent’s armour and that ‘ I never
fight for love I never do. I fight for truth, earnestly, and
in no wise for jest ; and against all lies, earnestly, and in no
wise for love. They complain that ‘ a noble adversary is not
in Mr Ruskin’s way ’. No ; a noble adversary never was,
never will be. With all that is noble I have been, and shall
be, in perpetual peace ; with all that is ignoble and false ever-
lastingly at war. And as for these Scotch houryeoU yevtils-
hommes, with their ‘Tu n’as pas la patience que je pare’, let
them look to their fence. But truly, if they will tell me
where Claude’s strong points are, I will strike there, and be
thankful.
yi/./*.. ///.|
Pla'ii- X\'1 ■ Pari \ Nailkvm'^m
I /’.
CHAP, xvm] THE TEACHERS OF TURNER 353
posed, an idealized abstract of the nature about
Rome. It is an ultimate condition of the Florentine
conventional landscape, more or less softened by re-
ference to nature. Fig. 8 [Plate B] , from No. 145
of the Liber Veritatis, is sufficiently characteristic of
Claude’s rock-drawing; and compared with fig. 5
[Plate B] , will show exactly the kind of modification
he made on old and received types. We shall see
other instances of it hereafter.
Imagine this kind of reproduction of whatever
other people had done worst, and this kind of mis-
understanding of all that he saw himself in nature,
carried out in Claude’s trees, rocks, ships — in every-
thing that he touched — and then consider what kind
of school this work was for a young and reverent dis-
ciple. As I said, Turner never recovered the effects
of it; his compositions were always mannered, life-
l(^s, and even foolish; and he only did noble things
TOon the immediate presence of nature had over-
powered the reminiscences of his master.
§ 28. Of the influence of Gaspar and Nicolo Poussin
on Turner, there is hardly anything to be said, nor
much respecting that which they had on landscape
generally. Nicolo Poussin had noble powers of de-
sign, and might have been a thoroughly great painter
had he been trained in Venice; but his Roman educa-
tion kept him tame ; his trenchant severity was
contrary to the tendencies of the ago, and had few
imitators compared to the dashing of Salvator, and
the mist of Claude. Those few imitators adopted
his manner without possessing either his science or
invention; and the Italian school of landscape soon
expired. Reminiscences of him occur ^ometimes in
Turner’s c(jrapositions of sculptured stones for fore-
ground; and the beautiful Triumph of Flora, in the
Louvre, probably first showed Turner the use of
definite flower, or blossom-painting, in landscape.
I doubt if he took anything from Gaspar; whatever
he might have learned from him respecting masses of
foliage and gplden distances, could have been learned
better, and, I believe, was learned, from Titian.
M. P., III.
A A
THE TEACHERS OP TURNER [part iv
§ 29. Meantime, a lower, but more living school
had developed itself in the north; Ouyp had painted
sunshine as truly as Claude, gilding with it a more
homely, but far more honestly conceived landscape;
and the effects of light of De Hooghe and Rembrandt
presented examples of treatment to which southern
art could show no parallel. Turner evidently studied
these with the greatest care, and with great benefit in
every way; especially this, that they neutralized
the idealisms of Claude, and showed the young
painter what power might be in plain truth, even of
the most familiar kind. He painted several pictures
in imitation of these masters; and those in which,
he tried to rival Cuyp are healthy and noble works,
being, in fact, just what most of Cuyp’s own pictures
are-T— faithful studies of Dutch boats in calm weather,
on smooth water. De Hooghe was too precise, and
Rembrandt too dark, to be successfully or affectiqn-
ately followed by him ; but he evidently learned much
from both.
§ 30. Finally, he painted many pictures in the
manner of Vandevelde (who was the accepted
authority of his time in sea painting), and received
much injury from him. To the close of his life,
Turner always painted the sea too grey, and too
opaque, in consequence of his early study of Vande-
velde. He never seemed to perceive colour so truly
in the sea as he saw it elsewhere. But he soon dis-
covered, the poorness of Vandevelde ’s forms of waves,
and raised their meanly divided surfaces into massive
surge, effecting rapidly other changes, of which more
in another place.
Such was the art to which Turner, in early years,
devoted his most earnest thoughts. More or less
respectful contemplation of Reynolds, Loutherbourg,
Wilson, Gainsborough, Morland, and Wilkie, was
incidentally mingled with his graver study; and he
maintained a questioning watchfulness of even the
smallest successes of his brother artists of the modern
landscape school. It remains for us only to note the
position of that living school when Turner, helped or
XVII .
cHAP.xvm] THE TEACHERS QF TURNER 355
misled, as the case may be, by the study of the older
artists, be^an to consider ifvhat remained f^r him to
do, or design.
§ 31. The dead schools of landscape, composed of
the works we have just been examining, were broadly
divisible into northern and southern : the Dutch
schools, more or less natural, but vulgar; the Italian,
more or Igss elevated, but absurd. There was a
certain foolish elegance in Claude, and a dull dignity
in Caspar; but then their work resembled nothing
that ever existed in the world. On the contrary, a
canal or cattle piece of Cuyp’s had many veracities
about it; but they \rere, at best, truths of the ditch
and dairy. The grace of Nature, or her gloom, her
tender and sacred seclusions, or her reach of power
and wrath, had never been painted; nor had any-
t^ng been painted yet in true love of it; for both
Dutch and Italians agreed in this, that they always
painted for the picture's sake, to show how well they
could imitate sunshine, arrange masses, or articulate
straws — never because they loved the scene, or
wanted to carry away some memory of it.
And thus, all that landscape of the old masters
is to be considered merely as a struggle of expiring
skill to discover some new direction in which to dis-
play itself. There was no love of nature in the age;
only a desire for something new. Therefore those
schools expired at last, leaving a chasm of nearly utter
emptiness between them and the true moderns, out
of which chasm the new school rises, not engrafted
on that old one, but, from the very base of all
things, beginning with mere washes o^ Indian ink, ,
touched upon with yellow and brown; and gradually
feeling its way to colour.
But this infant school differed inherently from that
ancienter one, in that its motive was love. However
feeble its efforts might be, they were for the sake
of the nature, not of the picture, and therefore,
having this germ of true life, it grew and throve.
Robson did not paint purple hills because he wanted
to show how he could lay on purple ; but because ho
M. P., III. AA2
356 THE TEACHERS OF TURNER [part iv
truly loved their dark peaks. Fielding did not paint
downs to show how dexterously he could sponge out
mists; but because he loved downs.
This modern school, therefore, became the only
true school of landscape which has yet existed; the
artificial Claude and Caspar work may be cast aside
out of our way — as I have said in my Edinburgh
lectures, under the general title of ‘ pastjralism ’, —
and from the last landscape of Tintoret, if we look
for Zi/e, we must pass at once to the first of Turner,
§ 32. What help Turner received from this or
that companion of his youth is of no importance to
any one now. Of course every great man is always
being helped by everybody for his gift is to get
good out of all things and all persons; and also
there were two men associated with him in early
study, who showed high promise in the same field,
Cousen and Girtin (especially the former), a^d
there is no saying what these men might have done
had they lived; there might, perhaps, have been
a struggle between one or other of them and Turner,
as between Giorgione and Titian. But they lived
not; and Turner is the only great man whom the
school has yet produced — quite great enough, as we
shall see, for all that needed to be done. To him,
therefore, we now finally turn, as the sole object of
our inquiry. I shall first reinforce, with such addi-
tions as they need, those statements of his general
principles which I made in the first volume, but
could not then demonstrate fully, for want of time
to prepare pictorial illustration; and then proceed
to examine,^ piece by piece, his representations of
the facts of nature, comparing them, as it may seem
expedient, with what had been accomplished by
others.
I cannot close this volume without alluding briefly
1 His first drawing-master was, I believe, that Mr Lowe,
whose daughters, now aged and poor, have, it seems to me,
some claim on public regard, being connected distantly with
the memory of Johnson, and closely with that of Turner.
CHAP. XVIII] THE TEACHERS OF TURNER 357
to a subject of different interest from any that have
occupied us in its pages. For it may, perhaps, seem
to a general reader heartless and vain to enter zeal-
ously into questions about our arts and pleasures in
a time of so great public anxiety as this.
But he will find, if he looks back to the sixth
paragraph of the opening chapter of the last volume,
some stal^ment of feelings, which, as they made
me despondent in a time of apparent national pros-
perity, now cheer me in one which, though of stern
trial, I will not be so much a coward as to call one
of adversity. And I derive this encouragement first
from the belief that the War itself, with all its
bitterness, is, in the present state of the European
nations, p^’oductive of more good thah evil; and,
secondly, because I have more confidence than others
generally entertain, in the justice of its cause.
I say, first, because I believe the war is at pre-
sent productive of good more than of evil. I will
not argue this hardly and coldly, as I might, by
tracing in past history some of the abundant evidence
that nations have always reached their highest virtue ,
and wrought their most accomplished works, in times
of straitening and battle; as, on the other hand, no
nation ever yet enjoyed a protracted and triumphant
peace without receiving in its own bosom ineradicable
seeds of future decline. I will not so argue this
matter; but I will appeal at once to the testimony
of those whom the war has cost the dearest. I know
what would be told me, by those who have suffered
nothing; whose domestic happiness has been un-
broken; whose daily comfort undistryrbed ; whose
experience of calamity consists, at its utmost, in
the incertitude of a speculation, the dearness of a
luxury, or the increase of demands upon their fortune
which they could meet fourfold without inconveni-
ence. From these, I can well believe, be they pru-
dent economists, or careless pleasure-seekers, the
cry for peace will rise alike vociferously, whether in
street or senate. But I ask their witness, to whom
the war has changed the aspect of the earth, and
358 THE TEACHERS OF TURNER [part iv
imagery of heaven, whose hopes it has cut off like
a spider’s web, whose treasure it has placed, in a
moment, under the seals pf clav. Those who can
never more see sunrise, nor watcti the climbing light
gild the Eastern clouds, without thinking what graves
it has gilded, first, far down behind the dark earth -
line — who never more shall see the crocus bloom in
spring, without thinking what dust it is ,that feeds
the wild flowers of Balaclava. Ask their witness,
and see if they will not reply that it is well with
them, and wdth theirs; that they would have it no
otherwise; would not, if they might, receive back
their gifts of love and life, nor take again the purple
of their blood out of the cross on the breastplate of
England. Ask them : and though they should answer
only with a sob, listen if it does not gather upon their
lips into the sound of the old Seyton war-cry — ‘ S^t
on. ’
And this not for pride — not because the names
of their lost ones will be recorded to all time, as
of those who held the breach and kept the gate of
Europe against the North, as the Spartans did against
the East; and lay down in the place they had to
guard, with the like homo message, ‘ Oh, stranger,
go and tell the English that wo are lying here,
having obeyed their words ’; — ^not for this, but be-
cause, also, they have felt that the spirit which has
discerned them for eminence in sorrow — the helmed
and sworded skeleton that rakes with its white
fingers the sands of the Black Sea beach into grave-
heap after grave-heap, washed by everlasting surf
of tears — has, been to them an angel of other things
than agony; that they have learned, with those
hollow, undeceivable eyes of his, to see all the earth
by the sunlight of deathbeds; — ^no inch-high stage
for foolish griefs and feigned pleasures; no dream,
neither, as its dull moralists told them ; — Anything
but that ; a place of true, marvellous, inextricable
sorrow and power; a question-chamber of trial by
rack and fire, irrevocable decision recording con-
tinually; and no sleep, nor folding of hands, among
CHAP, xviii] THE TEACHEKS OF TURNER 359
the demon-questioners; none among the angel-
watchers, none among the men who stand or tail
beside those hosts of God. They know now the
strength of sacrifice, and that its flames can illumine
as well as consume ; they are bound by new fidelities
to all that they have saved — ^by new love to all for
whom they have suffered; every affection which
seemed to sink with those dim life-stains into the
dust, has* been delegated, by those who need it no
more, to the cause for which they have expired;
and every mouldering arm, which will never more
embrace the beloved ones, has bequeathed to them
its strength and its faithfulness.
For the cause of this quarrel is no dim, half-
avoidable involution of mean interests and errors, as
some would have us believe. There never was a
great war caused by such things. There never can
ne. The historian may trace it, with ingenious
trifling, to a courtier’s jest or a woman’s glance; but
ho does not ask — (and it is the sum of questions) —
how the warring nations had come to found their
destinies on the course of the sneer, or the smile.
If they have so based them, it is time for them to
learn, through suffering, how to build on other founda-
tions; — for groat, accumulated, and most righteous
cause, their foot slides in due time; and against the
torpor, or the turpitude, of their myriads, there is
loosed the haste of the devouring sword and the
thirsty arrow. But if they have set their fortunes
on other than such ground, then the war must be
owing to some deep conviction or passion in their
own lioarts — a conviction which, in resistless flow,
or reckless ebb, or consistent stay, iS the ultimate
arbiter of battle, disgrace, or conquest.
Wherever there is war, there mufit be injustice on
one side or the other, or on both. There have been
wars which were little more than trials of strength
between friendly nations, and in which the injustice
was not to each other, but to the God who gave them
life. But in a malignant war of these present ages
there is injustice of ignobler kind, at once to God
360 THE TEACHERS OF TURNER [part iv
and man, which must be stemmed for both their
sakes. It may, indeed, be so involved with national
prejudices, or ignorances, that neither of the con-
tending nations can conceive it as attaching to their
cause; nay, the constitution of their governments,
and the clumsy crookedness of their political dealings
with each other, may be such as to prevent either
of them from knowing the actual cause for which
they have gone to war. Assuredly this is,^in a great
degree, the state of things with us; for I noticed
that there never came news by telegraph of the ex-
plosion of a powder-barrel, or of the loss of thirty
men by a sortie, but the Parliament lost confidence
immediately in the justice of the war; reopened the
question whether we ever should have engaged in it,
and remained in a doubtful and repentant state of
mind until one of the enemy’s powder-barrels blew
up also; upon which they were immediately satisficed
again that the war was a wise and necessary one.
How far, therefore, the calamity may have been
brought upon us by men whose political principles
shoot annually like the leaves, and change colour at
every autumn frost : — how loudly the blood that has
been poured out round the walls of that city, up to
the horse-bridles, may now be crying from the ground
against men who did not know, when they first bade
shed it, exactly what war was, or what blood was,
or what life was, or truth, or what anything else was
upon the earth; and whose tone of opinions touching
the destinies of mankind depended entirely upon
whether they were sitting on the right or left side of
the House of Commons; — this, I repeat, I know not,
nor (in all solemnity I say it) do I care to know.
For if it be so, and the English nation could at the
present period of its history be betrayed into a war
such as this by the slipping of a wrong w^ord into
a protocol, or bewitching into unexpected battle under
the budding hallucinations of its sapling senators,
truly it is time for us to bear the penalty of our base-
ness, and learn, as the sleepless steel glares close
upon us, how to choose our governors more wisely.
CHAP, xviii] THE TEACHERS OF TURNER 361
and our ways more warily. For that which brings
swift punishment in war, must have brought slow
ruin in peace; and those who have now laid down
their lives for England, have doubly saved her; they
have humbled at once her enemies and herself; and
have done less for her, in the conquest they achieve;
than in the sorrow that they claim.
But it is not altogether thus : wo have not been cast
into this fp^ar by mere political misapprehensions, or
popular ignorances. It is quite possible that neither
we nor our rulers may clearly understand the nature
of the conflict ; and that we may be dealing blows in
the dark, confusedly, and as a soldier suddenly
awakened from slumber by an unknown adversary.
But I believe the struggle was inevitable, and that
the sooner it came, the more easily it was to be met,
and the more nobly concluded. France and Eng-
land are both of them, from shore to shore, in a
state of intense progression, change, and experi-
mental life. They are each of them beginning to
examine, more distinctly than ever nations did yet.
in the history of the world, the dangerous question
respecting the rights of governed, and the responsi-
bilities of governing, bodies; not, as heretofore,
foaming over them in red frenzy, with intervals of
fetter and straw crown, but in health, quietness, and
daylight, with the help of a good Queen and a great
Emperor: and to determine them in a way which,
by just so much as it is more effective and rational,
is likely to produce more permanent results than ever
before on the policy of neighbouring States, and to
force, gradually, the discussion of similar questions
into their places of silence. To foroe it, — for true
liberty, like true religion, is always aggressive or
persecuted; but the attack is generally made upon
it by the nation which is to be crushed, — by Persian
on Athenian, Tuscan on Roman, Austrian on Swiss;
or, as now, by Russia upon us and our allies : her
attack appointed, it seems to me, for confirmation of
all our greatness, trial of our strength, purging and
punishment of our futilities, and establishment for
362 THE TEACHERS OF TURNER [partiv
ever, in our hands, of the leadership in the political
progress of the world.
Whether this its providential purpose be accom-
plished, must depend on its enabling France and
England to love one another, and teaching these,
the two noblest foes that ever stood breast to breast
among the nations, first to decipher the law of inter-
national charities; first to discern that races, like
individuals, can only reach their true* strength,
dignity, or joy, in seeking each the welfare, and
exulting each in the glory, of the other. It is strange
how far we still seem from fully perceiving this. We
know that two men, cast on a desert island, could
not thrive in dispeace; we can understand that four,
or twelve, might still find their account in unity;
but that a multitude should thrive otherwise than by
the contentions of its classes, or two multitudes hold
themselves in anywise bound by brotherly law Ifb
serve, support, rebuke, rejoice in one another, this
seems still as far beyond our conception, as that
clearest of commandments, ‘ Let no man seek his
own, but every man another’s wealth is beyond our
habitual practice. Yet, if once we comprehend that
precept in its breadth, and feel that what we now
call jealousy for our country’s honour, is, so far
as it tends to other countries’ dishonour, merely
one of the worst, because most complacent and self-
gratulatory, forms of irreligion — a newly breathed
strength will, with the newly interpreted patriotism,
animate and sanctify the efforts of men. Learning,
unchecked by envy, will be accepted more frankly,
throned more firmly, guided more swiftly; charity,
unchillod by* fear, will dispose the laws of each
State, without reluctance to advantage its neighbour
by justice to itself; and admiration, un warped by
prejudice, possess itself continually of new treasure
in the arts and the thoughts of the stranger.
If France and England fail of this, if again petty
jealousies or selfish interests prevail to unknit their
hands from the armoured grasp, then, indeed, their
faithful children will have fallen in vain; there will
CHAP, xviii] THE TEACHEB8 OP TURNEB 363
be a sound as of renewed lamentation along those
Euxine waves, and a shaking among the bones that
bleach by the mounds of Sebastopol. But if they fail
not of this — ^if we, in our love of our queens and
kings, remember how France gave to the cause of
early civilization, first the greatest, then the holiest, of
monarchsi; and France, in her love of liberty, re-
members how we first raised the standard of Com-
monweallfh, trusted to the grasp of one good and
strong hand, witnessed for by victory; and so join
in perpetual compact of our different strengths, to
contend for justice, mercy, and truth throughout the
world — who dares say that one soldier has died in
vain? The scarlet of the blood that has sealed this
convenant will be poured along the clouds of a new
aurora, glorious in that Eastern heaven; for every
sob of wreck-fed breaker round those Pontic preci-
f)ices, the floods shall clap their hands betw^een the
guarded mounts of the Prince-Angel; and the spirits
of those lost multitudes, crowned with the olive and
rose among the laurel, shall haunt, satisfied, the
willowy brooks and peaceful vales of England, and
glide, triumphant, by the poplar groves and sunned
coteaux of Seine.
^ Charlemajijno and St Lonis.
APPENDIX
I. Claude’s Tree-drawing
The reader may not improbably hear it said, by persons who
are incapable of maintaining an honest argument, and, there-
fore, incapable of understanding or believing the honesty of
an adversary, that I have caricatured, or unfairly chosen, the
examples I give of the masters I depreciate. It is evident, in
the first place, that I could not, if I were even cunningly dis-
posed, adopt a worse policy than in so doing ; for the discovery
of caricature or falsity in my representations, would not only
mvalidate the immediate statement, but the whole book ; and
Invalidate it in the most fatal way, by showing that all I had
ever said about “truth was hypocrisy, and that in my own
affairs 1 expected to prevail by help of lies. Nevertheless it
necessarily happens, that in endeavours to facsimile any work
whatsoever, bad or good, some changes are induced from the
exact aspect of the original. These changes are, of course,
sometimes harmful, sometimes advantageous; the bad thing
generally gains ; the good thing always loses : so that I am
continually tormented by finding, in my plates of contrasts,
the virtue and vice I exactly wanted to talk about, eliminated
from both examples. In some cases, however, the bad thing
will lose also, and then I must eith(*r cancel the plate, or in-
crease the cost of the work by preparing another (at a similar
risk), or run the chance of incurring the charge of dishonest
representation. I desire, therefore, very earnestly, and once
for all, to have it understood that whatever I say in the text,
bearing on questions of comparison, refers always to the
original works; and that, if the reader has in his power, I
would far rather he diould look at those works than at my plates
of them; 1 only give the plates for his immediate help and
convenience : and I mention this, with respect to my plate of
Claude's ramification, because, if I have such a thing as a
prejudice at all, (and, although 1 do not myself think I have,
people certainly say so,) it is against Claude ; and T might,
therefore, be sooner suspected of some malice in this plate
than in others. But I simply gave the original engravings
from the Liber Veritatis to Mr Le Keux, earnestly requesting
that the portions selected might be faithfully copied ; and I
365
366 APPENDIX
think he is much to be thanked for so carefully and success-
fully accomplishing the task. The figures are from the
following plates;
No. 1. Part Of the central tree in No. 134 of the Liber Veritatds.
2. From the largest tree
„ 158
S. Bushes at root of tree
184
4. Tree on the left
183
5. Tree on the left
05
G. li-ee on the left
172
7. Principal tree
8. Tree on the right
32
If, in fact, any change be effected in the examples in this
plate, it is for the better ; for, thus detached, they all look
like small boughs, in which the faults are of little conse-
■quence ; in the original works they are seen i.o he intended for
largetrunks of trees, and the errors are therefore pronounced
on a much larger scale.
The plate of mediieval rocks (X) has bt)cm executed with
much less attention in transcript, because the iJoinls there to
be illustrated were quite indisputable, and the instances were
needed merely to show the kind of thitu/ spoken of, not tlft
skill of particular masters. The example from Leonardo was,
liowever, somewhat carefully treated. Mr Cuff copied it
accurately from the only engraving of the picture which, I
believe, exists, and with which, therefore, 1 suppose the world
is generally content. That engraving, however, in no respect
seems to mo to give the look of the light behind Leonardo’s
rocks ; so I afterwards darkened the rocks, and put some light
into the sky and lily ; and tlie effect is certainly more like that
of the picture than it is in the same portion of the old
engraving.
Of the. other masters represented in the plates of thi.s
volume, the noblest, Tintoret, has assuredly suffered the most
(Plate XVII) ; first, in my too hasty drawing from the original
picture; and, secondly, through some accidintal errors of out-,
line which occurred in the reduction to the size of the page ;
lastly, and chiefly, in the withdrawal of the heads of the four
figures underue;^h, in the shadow, on which the composition
entirely depends. This last evil is unavoidable. It is quite
impossible to make extracts from the great masters without
partly spoiling every separated feature ; the very essence of a
noble composition being, that none should bear separation from
the rest.
The plate from Raphael (XI) is I think, on the whole, satis-
factory. It cost me much pains, as I had to facsimile the
irregular form of every leaf; each being, in the original
picterc, executed with a somewhat wayward pencil-stroke of
vivid brown on the clear sky.
APPENDIX
367
Of the other plates it would be tedious to speak in detail.
Generally, it will be found that I have taken most pains to do
justice to the masters of whom I have to speak depreciatingly ;
and that, if there be calumny at all, it is always of Turner,
rather than of Claude.
The reader might, however, perhaps suspect me of ill-will
towards Constable, owing to my continually introducing him
for depreciatory comparison. So far from this being thecase,
I had, as will be seen in various passages of the first volume,
considerable# respect for the feeling with which he worked;
but I was compelled to do harsh justice ii})ou him now,
because Mr Leslie, in his unadvised and unfortunate rechauffe
of the fallacious art-maxims of the last century, has sulfered
his personal regard for Constable so far to prevail over his
judgment as to bring him forward as a great artist, comparable
in some kind with Turner. As Constable’s reputation was,
even before this, most mischievous, in giving coimtenauce to
the blotting and blundering of Modernism, I saw myself
obliged, though unwillingly, to carry the suggested comparison
^^oroughly out.
II. German Phii.osophy
The reader must have noticed that I never speak of German
art, or German philosophy, but in depreciation. This, how-
ever, is not because I cannot feel, or would not acknowledge,
the value and power, within certain limits, of both ; but be-
cause I also feel that the immediate tendency of the English
mind is to rate them too highly ; and, therefore, it becomes a
necessary task, at present, to mark what evil and weakness
there are in them, rather than what good. I also am brought
continually into collision with certain extravagances of the
•German mind, by ray own steady pursuit of Naturalism as
opposed to Itlealism ; and, therefore, I become unfortunately
cognizant of the evil, rather than of the good ; which evil, so
far as I feel it, I am bound to declare. AncLit is not to the
point to protest, as the Chevalier Biinsrn and other German
writers have done, against the expression of opinions respect-
ing their philosophy by persons who have not profoundly or
carefully studied it; for the very resolution to study any
system of metaphysics profoundly, must be based, in any
prudent man’s miiid. on some preconceived opinion of its
worthiness to be studied; which opinion of German meta-
physics the naturalistic English cannot be led to form. This
IS not to be murmured .against— it is in the simple necessity
of things. Men who have other business on their hands must
368
APPENDIX
be content to choose what philosophy they have occasion for,
by the sample j and when, glancing into the second volume of
Hippolytus, we find the Chevalier Bunsen himself talking of a
* finite realization of the infinite’ (a phrase considerably less
rational than ‘ a black realization of white ’), and of a triad
composed of God, Man, and Humanity i (which is a parallel
thing to talking of a triad composed of man, dog, and caniue-
ne-ss), knowing those expressions to be pure, definite, and
highly finished nonsense, we do not in general trouble our-
selves to look any farther. Some one will perHaps answer
that if one always judged thus by the sample — as, for
instance, if one judged of Turner’s pictures by the head of a
figure cut out of one of them — very precious things might
often be despised. Not, I think, often. If any one went to
Turntir, expecting to learn figure-drawing from him, the
sample of his figure-drawing would accurately and justly
inform him that he had come to the wrong master. But if he
came to be taught landscape, the smallest fragment of Turner’s
work would justly exemplify his power. It may sometimes
unluckily happen that, in such short trial, we strike upon ag,^
accidentally failing part of the thing to be tried, and then we*
maybe unjust; but there is, nevertheless, in multitudes of
cases, no other way of judging or acting; and the necessity of
occasionally being unjust is a law of life, — like that of some-
times stumbling, or being sick. It will not do to walk at
snail’s pace all our lives for fear of .stumbling, nor to spend
years in the investigation of eveiy thing which, by specimen,
we must condemn. He who seizes all that he plainly dis-
cerns to be valuable, and never is unjust but when he honestly
cannot help it, will soon be enviable in his possessions, and
venerable in his equity.
Nor can I think that the risk of loss is great in the matter
under discussion. I have often been told that any one who
will read Kant, Strauss, and the rest of the German meta-
physicians and divines, resolutely througli, and give his *
whole strength to the study of them, will, after ten or twelve
years’ labour, discover that there is very little harm in them ;
and this I can w«ll believe; but I believe also that the ten or
twelve years may be better spout; and that any man who
honestly wants philosophy not for show, but for vse, and
knowing the Proverbs of Solomon, can, by way of com-
mentary, afford to buy, in convenient editions, Plato, Bacon,
1 I am truly sorry to have to introduce such words in an apparently
irreverent way. But it would be a guilty reverence which prevented
us from exposing fallacy, precisely where fallacy was most dangerous,
and shrank from unveiling an error, ju.st because tliat error existed in
parlance respecting the moat solemn subjects to which it could
I)Ossibly be attached.
APPENDIX
Wordsworth, CJarlyle, and Helps, will find that he has got as
much as will be suffii^ient for him and his household during
life, and of as good quality as need be.
It is also often declared necessary to study the German
controversialists, because the grounds of religion ‘ must be
inquired into *. I am sorry to hear they have not been
inquired into yet; but if it be so, there are two ways of
pursuing that inquiry : one for scholarly men, who have
leisure on their hands, b}*^ reading all that they have time to
read, for and against, and arming themselves at all points for
controversy with all persons ; the other — a shorter and
simpler w'ay — for busy and practical men, who want merely
to find out how to live and die. Now for the learned and
leisurely men I am not writing ; they know what and how to
read better than I can t dl them. For simple and busy men,
concerned much with art, which is eminently a practical
matter, and fatigues the eyes, so as to render much reading
inexpedient, I am writing ; and such men 1 do, to the utmost
of my power, dissuade from meddling with German books;
^^ot because I fear inquiry into the grounds of religion, but be-
cause the only inquiry which is jmsihle to them must be
conducted in a totally different way. They have been brought
up as Christians, and doubt if they should remain Christians.
They cannot ascertain, by investigation, if tlie Bible be true ;
but if it he, and Christ ever existed, and was God, then,
certainly, the Sermon which He has permitt:^! for 1800 years
to stand recorded as first of all His own teaching in the New
Testament, must be true. Let them take that Sermon and
give it fair practic^al trial: act out every verse of it, with no
quibbling, nor explaining away, except the reduction of such
evidently metaphorical expressions as ‘cut off thy foot’
‘ pluck the beam out of thine eye’, to their effectively practi-
cal sense. Let them act out, or obey, every verse literally for
a whole year, so far as they can — a year being little enough
•time to give to an inquiry into religion ; and if, at the end of
the year, they are not satisfied, and still need to prosecute the
inquiry, let them try the German system if they choose.
III. Plagiarism
Some time after I had written the concluding chapter of
this work, the interesting and powerful poems of Emerson were
brought under my notice by one of the members of my class at
the Working Men’s College. There is much in some of these
poems so like parts of the chapter in question, even in turn of
expression, that though I do not usually care to justify myself
370
APPENDIX
from the charge of plagiarism, I felt that a few words were
necessary in this instance.
I do not, as aforesaid, justify myself, in general, because I
know there is internal evidence in my work of its originality,
if people care to examine it ; and if they do not, or have not
skill enough to know genuine from borrowed work, my simple
assertion would not convince them, especially as the charge of
plagiarism is hardly ever made but by plagiarists, and persons
of the unhappy class who do Aot believe in honesty hut on
evidence. Nevertheless, as my work is so much oat of doors,
and among pictures, tliat I have time to read few modem
books, and am therefore in more danger than most people of
repeating, as if it were new, what others have said, it may be
well to note, once for all, that any such apparent plagiarism
results in fact from my writings being more original than I
wish them to be, from my having worked out my wholb
subject in unavoidable, but to myself hurtful, ignoraifce of the
labours of others. On the other hand, I should be very sorry
if I had not been continually taught and influenced by the
writers whom I love; and am quite unable to say to whaj^
extent my thoughts have been guided by Wordsworth, Carlyle,
and Helps; to whom (with Dante and George Herbert, in
olden time) I owe more than to any other writers ; — most of
all, perhaps, to Carlyle, whom I read so constantly, that, with-
out wilfully setting myself to imitate him, I find myself per-
petually falling into his modes of exi^ression, and saying many
things in a ‘ quite other and, I hope, stronger, way, than I
should have adopted some years ago ; as also there are things
which I hope are said more clearly and simply than before,
owing to the influence upon me of the beautiful quiet English
of^ Helps. It would be both foolish and wrong to struggle to
cast off influence.s of this kind ; for they consist mainlj in a
real and healthy help ; — the master, in writing as in painting,
showing certain methods of language which it would be, ridi-
culous, and even affected, not to employ, when once shown ;
just as it would have been ridiculous in Bonifazio to refuse to
employ Titian’s way of laying on colour, if he felt it the best,
because he hadfUot himself discovered it. There is all the
difference in the world between this receiving of guidance, or
allowing of influence, and wilful imitation, much more, plagi-
arism ; nay, the guidalice may even innocently reach into local
tones of thought, and must do so to some extent ; so that I
find Carlyle’s stronger thinking colouring mine rontinually ;
and should be very sorry if I did not; otherwise I should
have read him to little purpose. But what I have of my own
is still all there, and, I believe, better brought out, by far,
than it would have been otherwise. Thus, if we glance over
the wit and satire of the popular writers of the day, we shall
371
APPENDIX
find that the niattner of it, so far as it is distinctive, is always
owing to Dickens ; and that out of his first exquisite ironies
branched innumerable other forms of wit, viirjung with the
disposition of the writers; original in the matter and substance
of them, yet never to have been expressed as they now are, but
for Dickens.
Many people will suppose that for several ideas in the
chapters on Landscape I was indebted to Humboldt’s Kosmoa^
and Hewitt’s Rural Scenery, I am indebted to Mr Howitt’s
book for much pleasure, b^ for no suggestion, as it was not
put into my hands till the chapters in question were in type.
I wish it ht^ been ; as I should have been glad to have taken
farther note of the landscape of Theocritus, on which Mr
Howitt dwells with just delight. Other parts of the book
will be found very suggestive and helpful to the reader who
cares to pursue the subject. Of Humboldt’s Kosmos I
heard much talk when it first came out, and looked through it
cursorily; but thinking it contained no material (connected
with my subject) i which I had not already possessed myself
of, I have never since referred to the work. I may be
mistaken in my estimate of it, but certainly owe it absolutely
^nothing.
It is also often said that I borrow from Pugin. I glanced at
Pugin’s Contrasts once, in the Oxford architectural reading-
room, during ansidle forenoon. His ‘ Remarks on Articles in
the Rambler ’ were brought under my notice by some of the
reviews. I never read a word of any other of his works, not
feeling, from the style of his architecture, the smallest
interest in his opinions.
I have so often spoken, in the preceding pages, of Holman
Hunt’s picture of the Light of the World, that I may as well,
in this place, glance at the envious charge against it of being
plagiarized from a German print. *
It is indeed true that there was a painting of the subject
before ; and there were, of course, no paintings of the
Nativity before Raphael’s time, nor of the Last Supper before
^ieonJirdo’s, else those masters could have laid no claim to
originality. But what was still more singular (the verse to be
illustrated being, ‘ Behold, I stand at thg door^ and knock
the principal figure in the antecedent picture was knocking at
a door, knocked with its right hand, and had its face turned to
the spectator ! Nay, it was even robed in a long robe, down to'
its feet. All these circumstances were the same in Mr Hunt’s
picture ; and as the chances evidently were a hundred to one
that if he had not been helped to the ideas by the German
artist, be would have represented the figure as 7iot knocking at
1 iSco the Fourth Volume.
372
APPENDIX*
any door, as tuhxing its back €o ’the spectator', an<l &s dressed
in a short robe, the plagiarism was considered as demonstrated.
Of course no defence is possible in such a case. All I can say
is, that I shall be sincerely grateful to any unconscientious
persons who will adapt a few more German prints in the same
manner.
Finally, touching plagiarism in general, it is to be remem-
bered that all men who have sense and feeling are being
continually helped: they are taught by every person whom
they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way.
The greatest is he who has been oftenest aided ; and, if the
attainments of all human minds could be traced'»to their real
sources, it would be found that the world had been laid most
under contribution by the men of most original power, and
that every day of their existence deepened their debt to their
race, while it enlarged their gifts to it. The labour devoted
to trace the origin of any thought, or any invention, will
usually issue in the blank conclusion tliat there is nothing new
under the sun : yet nothing that is truly great can ever be
altogether borrowed ; and h^e is commonly the wisest, and is
always the happiest, who receives simply, and without envioirs
question, whatever good is offered him, with thanks to ivs'
immediate giver.
KND OF von. 111.
Richard Clay de Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.
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